Assembly Standing Committee on Education

Joel, are you there?

All right, I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is an informational hearing of the Assembly Education Committee. Welcome, everyone. We have a great lineup of speakers to address many of the most compelling issues who's facing our K through 12 students, our nearly 6 million students in the State of California. And so I want to thank all the Committee Members for being here on time and welcome, everyone. Before we get started, I think we just officially announced the end of the official state of emergency since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March of 2020.

It's been a long and hard year. Three years for all of us, of course, goes without saying. But we wanted to take this opportunity, this very timely opportunity, to get a check on where we're at and where do we need to go, what do we need to do to make up for all the setbacks, the hardship, the trauma that all of us experienced during the pandemic? We are going to be starting. Well, let's see here.

I have some other official things to read off here. So we're going to be starting off with our panel, with our State Board of Education President, Dr. Linda Darling Hammond, as well as our Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Thurmond. That will be the first panel. Then the second panel would be, again, a great group of experts to address academic progress, issues of mental health and well-being, chronic absenteeism. Where we're at. What do we need to do? Go from here.

And last, but certainly not least, addressing the ongoing crisis that was only worsened during the pandemic, California's education workforce. Hearing from four different speakers on this issue. After every panel, we will welcome committees from the Committee for each panelist. And after all of the panels have presented, at the end of the hearing, we'll be taking public comment in person. Comments may also be submitted through the Assembly Education Committee website. Okay, I see our Superintendent of Public Instruction, Mr. Thurmond. Welcome back, sir.

We can welcome you right away at the front desk. And we also have Dr. Darling Hammond ready to go, appearing virtually. Good afternoon to both of you. Welcome, sir. Always good to see you. Welcome back to the Legislature, and the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Members, it is like having deja vu, but I'm grateful to be here today to have a different conversation, but still about education and still about important topics. I'm joined by Cindy Kazanis, who's happy to answer any questions you have that might require some in-depth analysis of some of the data trends taking place in the state. And I'm grateful to be joining, Dr. Darling Hammond, good to see you, our state board of Education President.

As I stated, for those of you who were in yesterday's Budget Subcommittee hearing that the state of education, I would say, is hopeful. Yes, we do have challenges that need to be addressed, but we have incredible resources in this state, unlike those in any other state, and we have the opportunity to do great things. I come to you today on the heels of a couple of things I'd like to share with you.

One, the celebration of a distinguished schools event about two weeks ago, where we had the opportunity to recognize more than 450 schools for various levels of accomplishment in either closing the opportunity gap or other topics in education. I also want to just remind you that this week our schools are celebrating. Read Across America Day and week. And it's a great opportunity to spend time in schools.

And if we can assist in helping you all connect with any schools in your district for those kinds of programs, I highly recommend it. As you all know, it's the best part of the job. And I just want to let you know some of the great things that are happening. As I think about the questions that you've laid out about what happened in a pandemic and what happened the pandemic and where are we now? I'll share with you things that I'm sure you're already thinking about.

There was no playbook for our school communities, just like there was no playbook for anyone in the world about how to address the pandemic. It became the biggest disruption that we might ever experience. And as our schools made the decision to move into distance learning, it became glowingly clear that the most important tool at that time that students needed, they didn't have computers and access to the Internet. We had a million students without access to a computer or high-speed Internet.

And as Assembly Member Dahle will tell you, at the same time, in addition to dealing with the pandemic and what I call the pandemic of racism and the acts of hate that we were seeing, our communities were dealing with devastating wildfires and other conditions and so huge challenges. Our families experienced disruption in many ways. The best example I can give you, 800 million meals served to students and their families through our schools. People lost jobs, they lost loved ones. Huge challenges.

I think our schools continue to struggle like the rest of the world until we received things like rapid COVID tests where you can have awareness about whether or not someone was positive with COVID within 15 minutes, and then you can make decisions about how people could come back into our schools and then ultimately, the arrival of vaccines. But even then, the variants were strong.

And when schools tried to start back in January, we saw a huge staffing shortage, as staff and students themselves were impacted by COVID. I want to thank Dr. Darling Hammond and the Governor and the first partner and a number of folks on our technology team, including our Chief Deputy Superintendent, Mary Nicely. We all sprung into action, and we were able to get computing devices donated to many of our students. We literally moved a million devices to our students.

You all know I convened the task force on closing the digital divide, and we use that to leverage Internet from Internet service providers at $15 a month for students and lots of hotspots. But you can't hotspot your way through preparing students for the jobs of tomorrow. And again, I would just acknowledge the difficulties that I've learned from Assembly Member Dahle firsthand, that you can't hotspot your way in a community if you don't have access to broadband.

And I'm thankful to all of you for your work and our work together that ultimately resulted in $6 billion worth of funds to establish broadband for California schools. And so that's the stage of where we were during the pandemic. Post-pandemic, it is what you would expect and what you have heard in various reports.

When you look at test scores and student proficiency, clearly, we'd see that gaps that we were working to close before the pandemic were widened, and that student proficiency is lower in many cases than it was for student groups prior to the pandemic. Not all. And you'll hear some examples of places where there were bright spots. But by and large, we know that the entire nation has experienced these challenges and these gaps. It's not just a California issue, but California has unique resources to address them, these issues, and unique response in terms of resources that we've provided

The other issue that we've seen is in some communities and some groups of students, high rates of chronic absenteeism. And a lot of folks are still trying to unpack why, and in some cases, absenteeism rates as high as 30%. We know that there are students who never checked in at all during the pandemic. We know that that disruption that I was talking about led to many things, including families who left the state altogether.

One of the conversations I'm having with some of the state superintendents in other states is just how do we share information about where Californians went to. We have some good systems in our state, but even within our own state, we have difficulties tracking when students go from one district to the next. How do we track the students whose families have moved to other states and in some cases moved out of the country?

And so we know that we have a lot of work to do, and we're working with school district leaders on how to help schools address chronic absenteeism and declining enrollment. Enrollment has been declining for decades in our state. Population decline has occurred in our state, but we've seen an exacerbation of the declining enrollment during the pandemic. And we're working with districts to unpack that and to have strategies to address it. And then I just have to speak to this trend.

We know that we've seen high levels of depression and anxiety for our students during the pandemic. And I would say not just for students, but for everyone. And that California, even before the pandemic, lacked the mental health professionals to be able to provide the supports that were needed. That need was greatly exacerbated during the pandemic.

While we were working to close the shortage of mental health clinicians, we've launched a new resource that can be useful to anyone at any time who needs to talk to someone, and I invite you to share it. It's 988. You can simply text or call 988 24 hours a day, seven days a week if someone needs to talk to someone or have access.

During this time, we worked with you all and the Governor and Dr. Darling Hammond to secure resources that will allow us to recruit 10,000 mental health clinicians to serve in our schools. That's using the Golden State Teacher Grant. That will provide $20,000 to someone who commits to two years of being a mental health clinician in our schools. That same grant, by the way, is available for anyone who wants to become a teacher. And it's $20,000 for someone who would like to get their credential.

This Legislature last year provided a Learning Recovery Block Grant of $8 billion so that schools have resources to address learning recovery and learning acceleration. And we know that one of the most important ways to accelerate learning is providing high-dosage tutoring and expanded learning programs for our students. And what you're going to hear from us is the work that we're doing with our districts to provide programs like STEAM academies so they can lengthen the school year during the summer, providing STEAM academies.

And we're encouraging those districts to invite the students who are chronically absent to be the VIPs of these STEAM academies so that they're getting more time to offset learning gaps and loss. And they're getting access to great programs that will prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. In addition, California is continuing to lead with reading programs. As you know, in last year's budget, $250,000,000 for Reading Coaches and Specialist Grant for districts with the greatest need to bring on a coach or specialist.

The proposed budget has also plans to provide another $250,000,000 for reading coaches and specialists. And as you know, I have declared that we're going to work with our districts to ensure that our kids learn to read by the year 2026. Because you all know how important reading by third grade is for preparing our students for the future. It's a gateway skill. You learn to read, you can read to learn anything.

We've hired at the Department of Education, we've created two new positions so that we can have two statewide literacy directors who are working with our school districts to develop plans to help them reach reading by third grade. Universal meals. Since we were together last, we've grown our capacity to ensure that every student in our state can have two meals a day regardless of their background.

Universal preschool. California, unlike any other state, is offering preschool in a variety of mechanisms for three-year-olds and four-year-olds. Whether that's transitional kindergarten or Head Start or childcare programs, California is leading the way. And we know the importance that early education has in closing learning gaps and preventing them from happening in the first place. As I mentioned, universal transitional kindergarten.

I just have to mention if we need 10,000 more teachers, these strategies won't have the full impact if we can't address the current workforce shortage that California, like every state, is experiencing. And it's for those reasons that while districts usually handle recruitment at the local level, we've entered into that lane to help provide support to our districts around recruitment. We've created at the Department of Education a one-stop for districts and candidates to figure out how to become a teacher.

There's several web pages you have to go to to access the scholarship to learn about teacher credentialing programs. And we've created a career fair series that allows candidates to get information to get connected. We've created a hotline that anyone in the state can call, as well as an email that we hope you will put out. It's teachinca@cde.ca.gov. We've created a public service announcement that is helping to let people know about the great profession that teaching is.

We are doing career outreach for classified staff who want to become teachers for folks who work in our after-school programs. And we've started with the California Volunteers, our volunteer commission. The California Volunteers, has 10,000 members who are working in various types of programs throughout the state. 3000 of those members are working in schools. And so we have prioritized this group as a group to provide direct outreach, counseling, case management, career fairs, to let them know about the resources that exist.

And at the recent career fair that we held for this group, we've had upwards of 30 school districts that have come and joined us in recruiting directly, including teacher credentialing programs. And so what I want to leave with you is that while there are challenges, California has great resources and a thoughtful plan for how to overcome those challenges.

And the California Department of Education is leaning in and working closely with you all, with the State Board of Education and CCEE and our school districts and our county superintendents to find ways to address the biggest issues facing our schools and to make sure that we provide a high-quality education for our 6 million students. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. It's a long and comprehensive list of all the difficult challenges that you've been dealing with. I'm sure when you first ran for Superintendent, like all of us, none of us signed up for a global pandemic. We know that, like you said, started off from the outset, there was no playbook for how to deal with a global pandemic and its impact on our schools and our students. And so we thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you.

I neglected to give an opportunity to our Vice Chair, Assembly Member Dahle, to see if she had any welcoming remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I'm looking forward to today and all the panelists, and thank you, Superintendent Thurman, for coming to my district and really being on the ground with us and seeing rural education looks very different.

And I appreciate your time and coming and how we can all move forward now that we're officially out of the pandemic and what we need to do for our students and our teachers and our classified and just our communities in general, how we can all partner together, that we can come back and thrive and have successful students. They're our next generation. I know that everyone on this Committee is fully committed to whatever we can do for those next steps. So thank you for being here today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Dahle. I want to see if any of our other Committee Members wanted to have any opening remarks, if not. Mr. Hoover.

Thank you. Thank you for being here, Mr. Superintendent, and to all the panelists. You know, as someone who served on a school board throughout the pandemic, we saw firsthand the challenges that our kids came across. And I have a lot of thoughts looking backwards on what our state could have done better. But I think the goal of this hearing is to look forward and how we can really help our students recover.

I think that there were a lot of areas, even prior to the pandemic where we needed to make improvements. And it does concern me greatly that we're now more behind than we were then. But I am definitely open and ready and willing to work together to make sure that our students have the resources and also the support that they need to move forward. So thank you for being here today. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hoover, Mr. Carrillo.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you again for that presentation. It's really been challenging times, as Mr. Hoover mentioned, through the pandemic, having to serve our students and provide the resources that teachers needed. You mentioned the lack of devices for our kids to be able to attend school in a virtual way, the lack of Internet access as well.

That really was a challenge before pandemic, and then it just made us realize how important it was for us to be able to provide those resources and the technology needed in order to continue to educate our kids. Thank you for those efforts that you've done. And you mentioned a couple of things that are current challenges now, and those challenges may be the same in urban areas and different in rural areas. Obviously, again, with what we went through, what we experienced made it even more challenging.

But a couple of things that you mentioned, the teacher credential program, I think that that's something that we need to work hard on, not only to attract new teachers coming into the field, but also I think that we need to look at compensating teachers. They do a lot of work. We all know that. We all know that.

We know the challenges in the budget now, but I think that it's important for us to start looking at ways that we can really incentivize young students coming out of school and going into the teaching profession, because that's essential. Another thing that you mentioned, there's resources for students. I think that sometimes we forget foster students. Again, challenges are different in everybody's district. The district that I represent, the high desert, we do get a lot of foster students, and unfortunately, they come without resources.

We need to start addressing those issues so that we can actually be able to provide an equitable education regardless of where the kids come from, whether they've been foster kids, whether they've been immigrants, to make sure that we have a successful education for everybody. One thing that I believe it's been point of conversation is CTE, career technical education into schools. I think that that's another important thing to start looking at, because high school students, yes, we want them to be successful.

Yes, we want them to go to college. That's what we strive for. But we need to realize that there are other options for students. Career technical education is something that we need to start looking at. Those are conversations that we had, and I'm really looking forward to having those conversations to make sure that we prepare our future for those other opportunities that are available. Thank you for being here again, and thanks for all that you've done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Just a reminder, we're going to have an opportunity to ask questions of both Superintendent Thurman as well as Dr. Darling Hammond. Opening Comments Ms Quirk-Silva.

So we won't ask questions now?

Yeah, that's right.

Okay. I'll just wait because I have some questions.

Okay, great. Seeing no other opening comments, want to now turn it over to Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, the President of the California State Board of Education, appearing virtually. Dr. Hammond, thank you very much. The floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Chairman Merchuchi and Members of the Committee. I appreciate being able to eparticipate virtually. I'm just getting over a respiratory virus, as many people have been experiencing, and I'm glad to be able to be with you in this way. It's always a pleasure to be able to share a conversation with Superintendent Thurman, and I will try to build on his comments. I also sent some written remarks that I will refer to in order to be more succinct.

Now that will fill in some of the data that I'm referring to. As Superintendent Thurman noted, we have been through challenging times, but we've made enormous investments in our schools and there is a lot of work to do to implement those investments. Well, like other states, we did experience declines in achievement, increases in chronic absenteeism, declines in enrollment during this period of time, along with increases in mental health concerns.

But we have made these historic investments in public education addressing the issues of the pandemic with great purposefulness, and we have some evidence that some of these investments are beginning to pay off. I'm going to focus quickly on three things, the process of learning recovery, the shortages in our schools of teachers and other Members of the workforce, and student wellbeing, attendance and enrollment.

I'll try not to repeat the great information that Superintendent Thurman has already offered and build on those remarks with respect to student learning and achievement is, of course, great deal of concern about learning lag.

The fact that students'gains during the pandemic years have been slower in many cases than in the pre pandemic years, particularly young children and those who were in the most vulnerable position during the pandemic, including students experiencing homelessness, foster care, children and children who are economically disadvantaged, who experienced evictions, employment insecurity on the part of their parents, food insecurity, housing insecurity. So across the nation, of course, these things affected student achievement. And nationwide, student achievement did dip on reading and math tests nationally.

But California lost less ground than other states in mathematics, and we had no significant drop in reading. And in fact, in some of our cities like Los Angeles, which are tested on the national test, we actually saw gains in reading during this period of time. So we actually moved up in the state by state rankings during the pandemic in 2013. After the disinvent investments in public education that we experienced for many years, we were 40 eigth in the country in 8th grade reading in 2022.

We are now at the national average. And because of the investments that Superintendent Thurman outlined, we are gaining in our capacity to support students both in literacy and in math among cities. I mentioned that Los Angeles actually saw gains during that period of time on the national measures, and San Diego is also measured on that national test. And they stayed the number one urban district in the country in terms of reading and stayed stable in their performance.

And part of the reason for this is the investments that we made not only in digital capacity and opportunity for students to attend summer school. Nine out of 10 districts offered summer school. We have had extended learning opportunities. California spends more than the other 49 states combined on after school programs, and we've been infusing then additional resources, tutoring and other resources into those opportunities for additional learning.

On our state test, we actually saw that while there was a drop between 2019 and 2021, we have had an increase between 2021 and 2022 for those 700,000 students who took the same test in both years. That was steeper than the increases we were having before the pandemic. So we're seeing sort of a more aggressive gain in this last year again because of those investments.

And if you want to see the data at the top of page three in my written testimony, you can see the charts for reading and math in third to fourth grade for that cohort of students. But also it refers you to the data on the CDE website about students across the grade levels. So the gains are, of course, partly attributed to the $24 billion that we put in place to address the pandemic in many ways.

And I think are also a function of the mental health resources that are going into the system, the social and emotional learning and health supports and the community schools that are being developed now to add to the ones that we had before, that are wrapping around services to students, providing expanded learning time, really making it possible for them to get all of the supports that they need to be able to recover in learning and move ahead at a more rapid pace.

If we can actually keep the pace of learning that we were experiencing last year going, we will move ahead of where we were because we're supporting learning in so many new ways. When I mentioned Los Angeles'gains that were very surprising to folks, they had the largest gains in the country in 8th grade reading. They did all of those things. They had summer school for three years in a row.

They wrapped around students with digital supports right away with food and meals, and also with investments in literacy programs, both at the elementary level and at the middle school level, that allowed students to be supported in learning how to decode and read and then how to apply what they were learning throughout the grade levels and throughout all the subject areas.

Meanwhile, we are putting in the resources that Superintendent Thurman mentioned, and in this year's budget, the governor's proposed to expand the initiative to launch a literacy roadmap that can provide explicit guidance about how the state's curriculum framework, which incorporated the science of reading back in 2014 before many other states were talking about it, how to help teachers apply that in the classroom in a more explicit way.

We also need to do more in mathematics, and I want to point out that California is further behind in math than in literacy on both state and national assessments. We have too few students succeeding in launching careers in STEM to meet our state's economic needs. We will be enacting a new mathematics curriculum framework later this year.

We're going to need professional development to help teachers learn to reach and teach their students, all of them, to reach higher level mathematics and as part of the Golden State Pathways program that was enacted last year by this Legislature, which does address the career technical education needs of the state, as well as the needs for more personalized high school learning, we are about to launch some competitions for high school academies in STEM, in green technologies, and in teaching, bringing young people in through high school into interest in teaching opportunities to tutor and mentor, and on pathways to those credentials that we want them to achieve.

The equity multiplier in this budget will also add resources for the schools that are furthest behind, including in terms of staffing as well as in terms of investments in the other supports for student learning. I'm not going to say a lot about the teacher shortages because you are going to hear more about this later in the hearing, but we obviously can't make headway on any of our agendas unless we solve the teacher shortage once and for all.

In California, it is the single most important predictor of student achievement. I will note that we are going in a different direction than states like Florida and Arizona, which have been reducing standards for entering teaching. They're no longer requiring a bachelor's degree, they're not increasing the incentives to come into teaching, and we are doing that. We've been putting in place Golden State scholarships, which Superintendent Thurman mentioned residency programs for both teachers and student personnel, support providers, counselors and others.

And we are beginning to see a major turnaround in our situation with respect to shortages. We are one of the few states in the country that is actually seeing a substantial increase in the number of people coming into teaching. We just analyzed some of the data that teacher credentialing Commission keeps and we, between 2019 and 2021, increased the number of fully prepared teachers coming into the classroom by more than 35%. We have 3300 more people coming in with degrees that are fully prepared.

We have 2500 fewer teachers on emergency permits just in that period of time. So now our task is to lean in and really implement those programs well and make sure that we continue to recruit teachers into a profession that is attractive and supportive to them, and of course, that we do the same for school leaders. I'll also mention that we're making strides in getting expert teachers into the highest need schools.

The National Board Incentive Program that started in the 2021 budget is growing the pool of expert teachers who receive a stipend for teaching in high poverty schools of $25,000 paid out over five years. And just in this last year, we've seen an increase from about 400 teachers in those high poverty schools who are board certified to 1700.

These teachers have been found to be more effective not only as teachers, but also as mentors to beginning teachers so they can help those new teachers who are in those schools learn to teach quickly and effectively and stabilize the capacity of those schools to meet the needs of their students. Finally, as we know, there has been a lot of concern about student well being. We know that there's a troubling array of challenges that our students continue to experience.

In 2022, a CDC survey found that more than four in 10 adolescents reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless. We know that suicides have been increasing and we have $4.7 billion going into mental health services. We're trying to connect those very closely to the work in schools so that students can easily access those services. And then, of course, there are the community schools that are now in large numbers coming online to create the wraparound services that are making a difference in what students experience day to day.

So while many schools are struggling, we've also seen a lot of schools that are succeeding in engaging their students, meeting a wider range of needs than ever before. And the ones that are having the most impressive successes are those that have the wraparound supports and also are redesigning to be more personalized so that students are well known, particularly important in middle and high schools. In my written testimony, I gave examples of several schools that have really been improving during the course of the pandemic.

Two elementary schools, two high schools, urban and rural, and those included linked learning academies that are career technical academies that are organized in a way that students are getting advisory supports, access to community and industry partners, and engaging kinds of learning that they want to come to school for. And I won't quote to you at length from those I encourage you to feel optimistic by reading what some of our schools are doing. But I will just give you a couple of quick examples.

One in a rural community elementary school, Lost Hills elementary in Kern, county, which had substantial double digit gains in reading and math proficiency rates during the pandemic. They are a community school. They're part of a consortium funded in this new wave of community schools by the state. They not only have wraparound services that their community school manager and social worker provide, but cross district expanded learning programs, math incentive and learning programs.

And they're able to pull those resources together in a way that is succeeding extraordinarily well for their students. Another one is Royal High School in San Bernardino, where this is a large high school that has smaller academies in it for business and for energy, environment and utility pathways, green technologies. And the principal noted that during the pandemic, over 90% of our students attended school regularly. They find that it's a family environment. They want to be there because the learning is applied and meaningful to them.

And they noted how much excitement both the teachers and the students have to come every day. So we need to lean into these kinds of innovations and build on them, expand our capacity to reach more students, and build on those successes. Last point I will make is that educators are working extraordinarily hard in California at supporting students and also trying to launch and implement all of these new programs that we've been mentioning to you.

And it's very important that we hear the concerns from the field about the difficulties of meeting requirements for how instructional minutes are counted, how programs are administered, how dollars are spent and recorded. We can help our educators, in part by creating approaches to programs and service delivery that are not too bureaucratically cumbersome, that do not have extensive requirements, that go beyond what's necessary for tracking and auditing as the Local Control Funding Formula was being developed.

My predecessor at the State Board, Dr. Mike Kirst, used to talk about the hardening of the categoricals and the onerousness of some of those ways of getting money to schools. And we need to be thinking not only about making it possible for the programs to be implemented without hiring a lot of folks who are managing the audit trail, but hiring the teachers and the paraprofessionals and the principals who are going to be on the front line in schools.

It's also important that we make it possible to move beyond the factory model that we inherited, that we are able to innovate and invent and use new technologies and personalized schools so that they are places where children want to be and where adults also are able to be effective and satisfied and creative in their work. I look forward to working with the Assembly and my colleagues in the education Department on this agenda in the future.

Thank you very much, Dr. Hammond. Questions from the Committee. Ms. Quirk-Silva.

Thank you to the Superintendent and to our President of the California State Board of education. I appreciate your comments. And as an educator myself for 30 years, this means something. I do have a few kind of topics that I just like to hear more about. So I'll just ask the questions, and then whoever wants to answer, again, community schools, how is that defined? And what does that mean, just for the General audience?

Because I know, of course, you've got public schools, you've got charter schools, you've got all versions, but how are you? But I have more.

Okay.

As far as equity, which is a lens that I look through, because as we talk about our students, we know some of the students that have the largest gaps are within our Latino community and through the Local Control Funding Formula. For now a decade that we have had that formula, it's obviously focused on social, economic, on foster, and what was the third one? English learners.

And one of my concerns or concerns over, and not just talking about COVID has been making sure those funds get to those students in that year of the budget cycle. So one of the issues that we have been tracking through an audit related to the Local Control Funding Formula was that some schools would not be using those funds in that annual budget year and then rolling them over into a General Fund.

Why is this concern to me is because those funds are directed to those three subgroups. And when we talk about equity versus equality, we get a lot of opinion and there becomes a real difference of what does equity means. It means that some schools need to have three reading specialists because of the student population they have, and some schools may have not a need for one. But when you talk to the community about this, you will get a lot of hostility about using these funds equally.

So if school A has a reading specialist, school b should have a reading specialist. And yet that need won't be or every school should have a PE instructor or every school should have an art instructor. And these funds are generated for these three subgroups. Our English language learners are economically disadvantaged and foster. So that's just an area that's really important to me.

You didn't particularly speak about that, but I want to know if you've addressed this and how it's being addressed, because when we roll funds over from one budget into the General, it means they are not going to be directed to that subgroup. I'll stop there. Thank you.

If I could say one thing about the second of those questions. We did, as of last year, adjust the Local Control Funding Formula and LCAP requirements so that when money is not spent in a given year as it had been intended to on the local control accountability plan, if it's rolled over, it has to be spent on those purposes and students in the following year so it no longer can go back into the General Fund and just sit there.

It has to be used for those purposes. We encourage in the current trailer Bill, the idea that any subgroup of students who is doing poorly on any of the indicators should be a focus of the budget allocations and the plans for interventions.

We also are bringing the idea that bringing the long term English learner concerns to the front four so that there will be a way to both track English learners who are not moving forward at the rate expected and ensuring that there is attention to their needs as well. So that process has been getting more defined over the recent years to just the reasons you described, the purposes of ensuring equity. I'm sure Superintendent Thurman could talk about community schools a little more.

I know near and dear to his heart as well, so I'll let him.

Through the chair. Thank you, Dr. Darling-Hammond, and thank you for the questions Assembly Member Quirk-Silva.

I would also add to what Dr. Darling Hammond said, that to your points about equity, there have been enhancements to what's provided to schools through the Local Control Funding Formula that I think really will get at the heart of equity, not the least of which is an $8 billion allocation that is focused on learning recovery and that envisions that the students who need the supports the most will be getting them on top of that $4 billion for expanded learning.

That's just our way of saying programs that we provide during non school hours, before school, after school. Again, these programs build off of the LCFF structure and envision how we reach those students who need the greatest help and something that's really important, that more than $2 billion for arts and on top of that, with the passage of Prop.

28, additional funding for arts, I think it gets to the equity question that you were speaking to that for years, the schools that had maybe the parent club that could raise the money for the art teacher or the computer teacher or the music teacher got more than other schools because they just couldn't raise that separately. Now we have funding streams to ensure that these programs are provided in an equitable manner and then onto the community schools.

I guess a shorthand definition of that is just community schools are wraparound supports. It's a way that we recognize that the school can be the center of the community for many of our families and that sometimes there are social issues or health issues that are barriers to students academic success. Right. They can be successful, but when you're hungry or you're sick or you're dealing with homelessness or other issues, it can be very difficult to be successful.

And community schools is proven to support academic success by removing those barriers. I think of community schools as wraparound supports for health, for mental health, for social services, and it helps to remove those barriers. And as Dr. Darling Hammond points out, $4 billion allocated for community schools. Several rounds of grant funding have already gone out to school districts.

More than $650,000,000 have already gone out for planning grants for districts that have never had community schools and for implementation grants for districts that have very rich and robust experience with community schools. Like the Anaheim, would this be like.

The old healthy start program?

It's healthy start, so that's what I'm.

Remembering, but it's a great model. Thank you.

Very similar, different name, but the tenants are really the same. And I'm trying to think of school districts in your area. Anaheim Union High School District is recognized as one of the.

You're good.

Recognize as one of the leaders in terms of implementation of community schools. And we would be happy to provide any of the Committee Members with information about community school programs in your area that you could see if you want to get to know more about them.

All right.

I was just saying...Tony.

All right. Thank you. Vice Chair Dahle.

Thank you. Mr. Thurmond, how many community schools are up and going right now? You mentioned the investment towards how many do we have operational?

We can get an answer for you. I'm going to ask if we can circle back with our staff, but the data.

We've given implementation grants to 450 so far.

Thank you.

But there's a separate number for school districts that already have of community schools, and we were hoping to get that number for you as well because those grants are really for just getting started.

Okay, great. Thank you so much. And with the estimate of the $4 billion correct for community schools, how many should we be able to fund with those dollars?

We actually have another round of funding that's going to be going out in the next several weeks. We don't anticipate upfront who's going to be selected in their ranges of amounts that they can apply for, but if there's an estimate, we'll check back with our team to see if we can give you that before we leave here today.

Thank you, and then we could kind of have an average of how many students statewide we're going to be able to service through community schools. Dr. Hammond, I have a question for you. It's exciting to hear that we're 35 percent up with our fully prepared teachers. Does that include their credentialing completely and they're ready to go in the classroom without any support teachers needed with them?

Well, everybody needs support in their first year, but they are fully prepared. And these are folks who are credentialed. They've gotten their preliminary credential on the way in, and it's quite an amazing turnaround in a very short period of time, which shows what being purposeful about this can accomplish.

So a follow up to that, do we have a number of how many teaching positions we still need to fill in our state?

Well, we had been bringing. back in about 2017-18, we were bringing in about 12,000 people on substandard credentials and emergency permits and about 12,000 on preliminary credentials, fully credentialed new teachers. We're now to the point where bringing in about 16,000 fully credentialed new teachers. And we've dropped down the number of people on substandard credentials who are coming in. But each year the amount of new teacher entry is about 25,000.

So does that match the number of retiring teachers? I'm just trying to figure out how many, a goal number that we need to reach to make sure that our students have what they need.

That's great. And most of hiring each year is a function of attrition. So nine out of 10 teachers who are hired in a given year are replacing teachers who left the year before. Only about two-thirds of those people, well, only about a third of those people are retiring, and two-thirds are leaving for other reasons. So if we can reduce the number of people who leave, we will have to hire fewer each year.

And so that's part of the goal, is to really bring people in with what we call high retention pathways, which, when they're fully prepared and residencies are a case of very high retention, then they're likely to stay because they feel competent and they're getting the support they need. We will have to hire fewer. So it is a little bit of a moving target. But in recent years, we've been hiring about 25,000 a year, bringing in about 25,000 a year.

Okay.

And hopefully, if we can keep more of these teachers who are coming in well prepared, that number will go down and we can invest more in those who are on their way in, rather than having the churn that we were experiencing for a period of time.

Thank you.

If I could, Assemblymember Dahle, Madam Vice Chair, we're checking with the commission on teacher credentialing to see what the latest number is that they hold for the number of teachers that we need every year. But just as one example, to give some context about the significance of the effort, if you think about fully implementing transitional kindergarten, many have used the estimate that we need 10,000 teachers to fully implement that.

And so it's a big number, but there are many great programs underway that will help us to get there, like the residency programs that Dr. Darling-Hammond talked about so that we get credentialed teachers into those programs.

Thank you. That's helpful. And back to Mr. Thurman, the 10,000 mental health clinicians. What kind of movement have we made there in hiring those positions with the signing bonuses that we're offering?

The allocation or the eligibility to use the $20,000 scholarship was made just at the end of last legislative cycle. And so it does mean that for many of the future clinicians, they're going to have to be, they're not signing bonuses, they're actually scholarships to go into a credentialing program, to become licensed as a master's in social work or marriage and family therapist or any of the counseling professions, but that they would have a credential.

And so in those programs, it's a longer runway because they've got to get into a program that's probably going to be two years, and they're going to have to do some field training. But in the meantime, we are working with our school districts to help them maximize the use of a federal program that can help to bring clinicians into schools right now. And that's Medi-Cal.

It's a federal entitlement, which is a fancy way of saying that the federal government can't say no if you qualify, you have to be able to get it. And many of our schools have learned how to use Medi-Cal, but it is very rigorous and the billing process is very difficult. And so we're providing training to school districts to be able to do that.

And so, as Dr. Darling-Hammond mentioned, there's also this $5 billion initiative to provide what I call mental health delivery through no wrong door. And it's trying to bring together the school counseling programs with county health programs and with managed care, the healthcare companies, so that there are ways to say that from birth to 25, someone can receive health care. It is daunting nationwide. Every single sector is experiencing a workforce challenge. And as it relates to recruiting mental health clinicians, this is one.

But California is well positioned and we're building these programs in real time and also building a pathway for future clinicians as we go.

So just a final thought to both of you. I know that you mentioned streamlining and how we're going to be able to get these dollars as quickly as we can to our students and our teachers. Something I hear from my superintendents countywide, all my 11 counties, they call it the plandemic. So if there's any way that we can work to streamline and make things more efficient, obviously, we need accountability and audits.

But I do think that, especially for some of my smaller school districts, writing a plan for every dollar that comes in is daunting and it's slowing down the process and being able to really teach students. So, anyway, I just want to throw that out there. I know that there's lots for you to consider, but that's definitely top of mind for my counties.

Ms. Kazanis going to give you a quick number of the number of community schools currently in operation. But to the pandemic, we're happy to meet with your county superintendents, and we're happy to meet with any of your county superintendents and districts. And you're right. We have to figure out ways to make this manageable for our school district leaders.

What we try to do is filter information that we hear from school leaders here to the Legislature so that the policies that get implemented don't just feel like bricks falling down on them. And we also try to communicate the things that we hear from our partners in the Legislature that are important. Unfortunately, there are some things that we can't change because they're written into statute in terms of accountability. But we do our best to try and find ways to make it more manageable.

And we'd be happy to work with any of your county superintendents and any of the county superintendents for any of the members of the committee. Thank you.

Thank you.

And just that final number is 2000 or more sites when the community schools funding is potentially all rolled out.

Thank you.

Thank you. Before I turn to Mr. McCarty, just a status check. We're one hour into our hearing and we got two more great panels to go. Mr. McCarty? Yes.

As we know, it always happens. We have two hours for the first panel and then for the last panel. You'll be here by yourself, Mr. Muratsuchi. Yeah, so we talked about this yesterday in our budget sub two hearing. This is for either for the Department of Ed or our panel virtually from the Board of Education. School districts after the pandemic are just focused on getting back to normal and of course, dealing with the learning loss.

And we have a massive $8 billion block grant, which they do a lot of different things. Then we also put on top of them. Speaking of plans, opportunities for four amazing things that in any other decade would have been like, zero my gosh, California did that. So universal T-K, universal school meals, universal after-school programs with this fancy ELO-P word, but it's really after-school programs and then community schools, which is, I guess like one in three schools will be a community school.

How much more do we need to help our school districts figure this out? And do we need more technical assistance? Do we need more planning grants? Some of them may just not be, they may not be saying we're not interested, but they're just focusing on the basics and getting back going with our education and our public schools.

Yeah. If I could just note that as we have started all of these programs and thank you so much for attending to the sense that folks may have of some overload. In many parts of the state, there is a long tail. So as Superintendent Thurman noted, for the community schools, there have been two rounds of planning grants, and districts can take up to two years with planning grants to figure out how they would like to implement.

So we're trying to make it possible for people to take the time they need. Some folks, of course, are raring to go. And they immediately applied for implementation grants and they're taking off. But others really do need that time. With T-K, as you know, we have until 2025-26. A surprising number of districts are implementing ahead of the legislative schedule, including our four largest ones and many, many others.

But we do know that there will be places that need more time to get all of the pieces in place for that. So there is a sensitivity to the need to both use this much of the resource for some of these programs was one time money, but to stretch it out over five to seven years so that there really is the time for both people to get ready to engage, but also to do the work well and with support.

We have technical assistance providers associated with almost all of the grants that are able to then help people handhold them, show them what's been done by others, and connect them with other successful schools and districts to learn with and from them. But it is a daunting task for those who may have less capacity in the initial instance.

I would also just add that schools are having to ramp up in real time, and they're not getting a pause, they're not getting a break, as the Vice Chair would point out that now we had the wildfires, now we're dealing with flooding, and we're dealing with weather conditions. And schools are under intense pressure. And I want to give a big shout out to our emergency team, the three J's, as they're often called, who triage to support schools who sometimes have to close due to weather conditions.

And so as Assembly Member Carrillo talks about foster youth, we also have probably 200,000 homeless students in the state, maybe 8,000 who are on their own. And so we are looking at ways to support districts as they deal with these issues, and we literally put on webinars to help school district administrators, teacher, and classified staff talk about how do you provide self-care for our educators? Because they're feeling fatigued and there's no pause button.

They're having to ramp up through these new programs that Mr. McCarty has referenced in real time as they deal with these challenges. But I would just remind you that even with these challenges, there continue to be bright spots. And it's important that we continue to highlight these bright spots. You're going to hear from some great people who represent a bright spot today, and you've probably seen them already in the building today.

And I know Assemblymember Carrillo asked about career technical education, and we have the Future Farmers of America in the building today. They're wearing their jackets, and they're walking through the building. They're interviewing legislators. They're asking about what you do, how do you become a Legislator? How do you make policy? My point is that in spite of these challenges, our students persevere and they are hungry to learn and they want to be successful. And this is the toughest moment that we've ever experienced.

But we are going to work through it. We'll have to figure out ways to provide self care and well being for the people who provide the leadership for our students and to help our school districts work through the challenges of implementation of these once in a lifetime programs. But they're the right programs in California's moving in the right direction.

Mr. Superintendent, speaking of the Future Farmers of America, we see some of them behind you. Welcome to Sacramento. All right, seeing no further questions. Thank you very much, Superintendent. Dr. Darling-Hammond, for your leadership, for your time. We look forward to continue work with you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, moving on then, to the next panel. I'd like to invite all three of the panelists, and that is Dr. Heather Hough, the executive director of policy analysis for California Education, Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, and Trina Frazier, the assistant superintendent for student services, office of the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools. Welcome. Like to start with Dr. Hough when you're ready.

Thank you all so much for having me here today to talk with you about the impact of COVID-19 on student learning. I'm Heather Hough, the executive director of PACE, Policy Analysis for California Education, which is a nonpartisan research center and a partnership of California universities. We're headquartered at Stanford. I come today to share knowledge derived both from research and from our partnership with school districts.

We work with dozens of districts statewide, serving millions of students, representing the full diversity of region, urbanicity, size and student populations statewide. From the start of the pandemic, researchers have been concerned about the effects of the pandemic on learning, first predicting and then analyzing local interim assessment data to understand the impact. The SBAC scores from spring 2022 presented the first opportunity to understand fully and at scale how California students' learning has been affected by the pandemic and by related school closures.

When we talk about the effect on student learning, what we actually want to know is whether our students and to what extent our students have been thrown off track in developing the skills and knowledge needed to prepare them for future coursework and eventually for college and career. And if we don't have great data, we don't have great data to answer this question in California.

We don't have any statewide measures at all for students younger than third grade, and this year the college and career indicator was not reported. What we do have at scale is the SBAC, which provides a pretty good measure because it's aligned with our state's academic standards in both English language arts, ELA, and math, and it's administered to all students in grades three through eight and grade 11. So our question in looking at these data is twofold.

The first is, how is student learning now different from what it would have been under typical conditions? And the second question is, has there been an inequitable impact for students in different groups? So I'd like to direct you to this handout in your packet which shows that there has been a substantial decline in student test scores since pre-pandemic, and we provide a lot of analysis in there. First, take a look at figure one.

It shows that the percentage of students meeting or exceeding ELA standards has declined for every grade since prior to the pandemic, but the worst decline is in third grade. For third graders in 21-22 only 42 percent met or exceeded standards in English language arts. That's a decline of 6.4 percentage points since 2019. Figure two shows this data. For math, the proportion of students meeting or exceeding standards declined dramatically but was worse for eighth grade students. Figures 3 and 4 show these declines by student group.

The blue markers show the 2019 data and the red circle markers show declines to 2022. The arrow sizes show how much the decrease was for each subgroup between those two years. The performance of English learners, low income students and students of color, which is all those students on the left, is particularly concerning because their scores were already much lower to begin with than other groups.

So you may hear people say it's okay because California didn't do as bad as other states, or it's not as bad as it could have been, or that test scores don't measure all the things we care about. But I'm going to give you five reasons why these data should be sounding the alarm. The first, Dr. Darling-Hammond, shared that California didn't show as much decline as other states.

But it's important to note that the national assessment samples only a small number of students in each state, just over 4000 students in California. And it showed very serious declines nationwide, with two decades of academic growth wiped out by the pandemic. And it's not something for us to celebrate that California is at the national average in ELA.

We're still significantly below the national average for math in both fourth and eighth grade, which brings me to my second point. Even before COVID, our system was not good at accelerating learning. Despite years of investment and steady progress, California still had both lower average scores and greater disparities among student groups relative to other states. The third point is that these scores are objectively troubling. For example, only 14 percent of black fifth graders are performing at grade level in English language arts.

There's just no world in which that is okay. The fourth point each year of learning is cumulative, so a setback can have long lasting effects and change educational and life trajectories for a generation of students. For example, there's a large body of research that shows that if students don't know how to read by third grade, it becomes very difficult for them to access higher level content.

For older students, getting off track can cause them to miss opportunities to take advanced coursework or enroll in postsecondary programs, which then just puts them on a completely different path. And we're seeing both of those things happen today. We also know that there are California students who are not accounted for, and their learning is completely unmonitored. As you know, we've lost 270,000 students in our public system. Some of this is driven, of course, by people leaving the state.

But new research out of Stanford has shown that there is an estimated 152,000 students who we just don't know anything about, and we believe that they're in California. They could be in homeschool programs, truant, or be in families that have chosen to skip kindergarten. The takeaway here is that student learning has suffered during the pandemic full-stop. Even in the best conditions, our systems were not prepared to address this kind of setback.

As you'll hear from other panelists today, though, there are significant challenges locally that have made it difficult even to maintain the level of instructional quality that we had before the pandemic, much less to provide the kinds of support needed for learning acceleration. So what needs to happen now? First, we need to reorganize all of our schools to focus on student learning.

A promising approach here is a CCEE school improvement pilot that I'm involved with that's designed to make sure students learn essential standards through teacher collaboration, intervention, and a relentless, data driven focus on student learning. The second is that state leaders need to ensure coherence, alignment, and sustainability so that schools and districts can focus on the work of instruction. Right now, many of the districts we work with are reporting that the many new state initiatives have created incoherence, burdensome reporting and a lack of focus.

And they're really concerned about what's going to happen when the money goes away. Finally, we need more leadership at the state level to help schools and district address the serious challenges they're facing and to help them dramatically improve teaching and learning. I don't have all the answers here, but I'm going to leave you with two critical questions. What is the appropriate state role in addressing these local barriers to effective implementation and improvement?

And what is the responsibility of the state to ensure that programs are implemented effectively and that public funds are used responsibly? Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Hough, and we will be coming back. I'm going to have a lot of questions for you. I really appreciate that presentation. Next, we have Dr. Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works. Welcome.

Thank you so much. It is such a privilege to be able to be speaking here today. Attendance Works, just so you know, we are actually a national initiative. We work across the country. We have connections to 30-something states, work in depth in about eight or nine. One of them is in California. But I, myself, and we are headquartered here in California. So this is where we probably have some of our deepest knowledge.

I want to talk about the attendance crisis that you already have been hearing from Superintendent Thurmond. So if we go to the next slide, I want to just make sure we're clear a little bit about what we're talking about. We're talking about the term of chronic absence, which we actually didn't measure and monitor until about five years ago here in California, it's a relatively new term. We use it for accountability purposes, but it's also meant to be an early warning mechanism.

So noticing when kids miss 10 percent or more of school, two days in the first month, four days in the second month, six days, and that's how you should be using it at the local level so you can identify students who've missed so much school for any reason that you can intervene before they've missed so much school that actually the problems have now become much more deeply entrenched.

If you go to the next slide, this is a shift away for California from truancy, which is just unexcused absences, to chronic absence. It's a shift from, this is about compliance, to I need to notice because when kids aren't in school, there's something they're missing out on. There's a challenge they're facing, and we have to more deeply engage and partner with families to change that situation.

If you go to the next slide, what you can see is that nationally we have seen chronic absence double it probably was 16 million kids, I mean, 16 percent of kids before the pandemic, it's around 30 percent. So it's gone from eight to about 16 million nationally. But I want to go to the next slide, so that's national context. In California, this is our chronic absence, if you do the grade span. So kindergarten chronic absence went from 15.6 percent to 40 percent.

At the end of last year, we had huge increases in every single grade level, but that particular grade level is extraordinarily high. And I will say that I worry a bit that our high school chronic absence levels are an underestimate of the challenge, because in California, since we're an average daily attendance funded state, districts, for very good reasons, tend to count kids as being there as long as they're showing up for one period.

So the challenge in our high school years actually may be somewhat masked by our data.

Ms. Chang, could you pull the mic to you a little closer?

I'm so sorry. So what I was saying is that the challenge at our high school levels may actually be masked because we tend to count kids as being there present as long as they show up one period. And so we are probably underestimating the level to which kids are missing so much school that they're academically at risk. And our kindergarten levels are just extraordinary. And if you go to the next slide, this is chronic absence by ethnic background.

Well, by all our different subgroups, but 42 percent of our African American students, and if you look at just the kindergarten levels, it's over 50 percent of our African American kindergartners in the state are chronically absent. American Indian, Alaskan kids, I mean, the disproportionality is playing out. So the pandemic has exacerbated preexisting educational inequities in really significant ways. And it's playing out in our chronic absence rates.

If you go to the next slide, what we know is that kids come to school when you feel physically, emotionally healthy and safe, when you feel that sense of belonging, connection, support, when you feel academic challenge and engagement, when you have adults and student wellbeing. And the pandemic meant that the outside conditions external to schools really challenged schools to be able to maintain these conditions, particularly physical, emotional, health and safety.

But then when we went virtual, that belonging, connection support was cut off for so many schools, for all the reasons the superintendent and Dr. Darling-Hammond were talking about. But the challenge is it's going to take a long time to put that in place, and we've been making investments, but those investments have far from been realized in terms of making these conditions true.

So if you go to the next slide, one of the things that we really have to help schools and communities, districts do is understand in their communities, what are the particular challenges that are keeping kids from showing up to school. And they're also keeping kids from learning when they are in school, by the way, chronic absence is sort of that canary in the coal mine that means so much more.

And then we'll have to understand what are the issues facing our youngest kids versus our older kids? Is it work responsibilities? Is it fear of getting sick? One huge issue we have is we've just spent 2-3 years telling kids and families, if you feel any sign of illness, you should stay home. That's how you stay safe. Everyone feels anxiety. Guess what happens when kids feel anxiety? They have a stomachache, they have a headache.

If you stay home when you feel anxious, it's actually the wrong solution. You have to get back into a routine of school. So the challenge is about helping people understand the importance of going to school and making sure that we have the supports to help them show up. And good advice about knowing when to stay home because you're contagious and when to come to school.

If we go to the next slide, this is about putting in place a tiered support system that builds upon those foundational supports that I mentioned before, those positive conditions for learning. And then make sure we have used data to figure out which kids, which populations, which schools need more support. If you go to the next slide, it's about putting in a systemic approach where we have actionable data that is used to activate positive engagement, strategic partnerships, adequate and equitable resources, shared accountability and responsibility.

And we're building the capacity throughout the state to do this. My last slide is these are some of the key action steps I would urge you to consider. We have to have team approaches to doing this. By the way, it isn't always about creating new teams. It may be taking existing teams. We've already been hearing, folks are initiative fatigued. They don't need new initiatives. We have to figure out how to not create a new initiative.

But if you just took expanded learning programs, you can take data, or the superintendent talked about taking data to target which kids should be in STEM programs, but we should be using data on chronic absence to know who we need to target, which schools need the supports, which districts, which populations, and then we should be using attendance data to say, okay, so are kids showing up? Because if they're not showing up, it's not quite working in the way we need.

And we need to have this be a whole school, whole community approach because it is clearly beyond just the capacity. This is why the community schools work is so important of just schools alone, to make sure that our kids can experience those positive conditions of learning. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Chang. Next we have Assistant Superintendent Trina Frazier.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the Committee. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to discuss mental health today. Our children and youth are facing a behavioral health crisis that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. One in five children lives with a mental health diagnosis. Suicide is the number two cause of death among youth 10 to 24. Mental health is the number one reason children ages zero to 17 are hospitalized.

And during the pandemic, we've seen an increase in substance use and abuse by youth and their families, increases in mental health referrals, increases in emergency hospital visits, and suicidal ideation and attempts. Children and youth experiencing feelings of hopelessness and sadness. Some of the things we're seeing in Fresno County are an increased need for mental health services in our schools, an increase in referrals to our behavioral health program, and increased anxiety and depression hospitalizations and 5150s. Those are referrals.

We can change the trajectory of our children and youth if we all work together to create an integrated system of care. Our children and youth are so resilient. At Fresno County Superintendent of Schools, we are working to address some of these needs. We've created a program called All for Youth. It's in collaboration with Fresno County Department of Behavioral Health, and we've hired 130 clinicians and case managers to provide specialty mental health. We're in 277 schools in 32 school districts and we're serving ages zero to 22.

Because we've built the program from the ground up, we've been able to hire the staff that we need for those programs, especially to serve our rural communities. 60 percent of them are bilingual, which we're very proud of because our students need to have clinicians that they can communicate with. We're in year four of a five-year contract, which we're currently rewriting, and we've provided 10,000 services to children and youth during that period. And yet, we still have barriers, challenges and gaps.

And some of those are students who have private insurance, who are not able to get services or access our services anyway in the way that a child with Medi-Cal is, they can't afford their deductibles, they can't afford their copays. There's nothing available in their community. That's going to take policy change. We have two students who sit in the same classroom, side by side with the same needs. One gets services and one doesn't. We have to do something about that.

We have a lack of space on our campuses to provide therapy. We need to be able to use more unlicensed staff to provide some of these services and get reimbursed for it, because mental health and behavioral health impedes their learning. It's very difficult to learn when you have these things that they're dealing with. Transportation is a huge barrier to getting services, especially if you live in some of the rural communities. We don't have a universal data sharing mechanism to share data.

So some students get duplicated services and some get none, and we have no way of sharing that information with each other. Our systems are extremely hard to navigate, even for educated people, they're hard to navigate, so we need to do something about that as well. But one of our biggest challenges is the pervasive stigma that surrounds mental health. It is alive and well and it's difficult for even people to talk about.

We talk about cancer and we talk about heart disease, but when it comes to mental health, it's difficult to talk about. And we know that what we don't talk about can sometimes turn to shame. So we have to address the stigma that surrounds mental health. Some solutions, we need to ensure that our systems are integrated and stop working in our silos. We have to work together. We must intervene earlier.

That zero to five population is so important because we know the earlier we're able to intervene, the better our outcomes will be. We need to provide more prevention opportunities for our families, do that preventative work. We need to coordinate care more effectively. We need to increase our workforce, that's been talked about many times today. There's just not enough staff out there to do this work. We need to prioritize the facilities in our schools.

When you have a therapist that can provide the services, but there's no space for them, that's really an issue in our schools and then address the stigma. But also the funding needs to be ongoing. So many times in education we put money into something that's really needed. But sometimes the support services are the first services to go away when the money isn't there.

And so there is a lot of money out there right now for mental health, but it has to be something where we build programs and systems that are sustainable. We are such a very, very strong state and we need to make mental health a priority because it really is. Our children are counting on us to do that. And I really thank you for your time today.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Okay. Questions from the Committee. Mr. Mccarty, you and I are here, right? Yeah.

I have a question to the attendance works individual. You mentioned something, and I had a constituent inquiry about this. In the last few months, a parent got a letter from the district, like the Sarb type thing, saying, hey, your kid's not in school, blah, blah. And at the same time they're getting these messages that if you have any sniffles or this and that, stay home. So how much do we think of these numbers of the high absenteeism is based upon these conflicting messages?

We're telling parents, we need you to be in school so we can get our Ada or we're going to lose money. And they get notices saying that it's an important issue for their kids well being. But also we have these pushes saying, hey, if there's any doubt, if you have any of these things. And sometimes when I see those things, like every day I have a sniffle.

Yeah.

And I see those everything. Any day I could be one of those things.

Right. So I think, first, I don't know exactly what percentage that is, but I will say that I think we probably need some real collaboration between our health services Department and our schools about how to offer consistent guidance to families that both help them understand what are the signs. And what I understand from talking to school nurses to.

We brought in, actually, a physician on our staff to help us figure out guidance, is that most people are now returning to the pre pandemic guidance of, if you don't have a. You have to have a fever. There's a series of things that nurses typically use and say, if you have those things, absolutely stay home. And if not, you should come to school. The challenges, the guidance about showing back up to school and the importance of being in school is not understood.

The folks basically are still. It takes a while for messaging to shift. But I would say that what I'm also seeing in the work is that even if kids missed for excused reasons and they stayed home for those reasons, when they're returning, there's a disengagement that still has to be addressed. And we have more and more kids who are feeling disconnected and disengaged.

And the strategy for bringing them back into school isn't going to be solved by improving the guidance about whether or not you should stay home because you're ill or not. It also requires reconnecting them back to the joy of learning, reconnecting them to peers, reconnecting them to adults, which is part of why we also have some of the mental health crisis is because kids have been disconnected from their communities. So on one hand, we have to improve the guidance.

On the other hand, we also have to figure out how do we build stronger relationships, reconnect kids and families to schools, and both have to be happening.

Yeah, it's my hope that we are getting it back to normal in many things. And just this week is the first time in three years that we got rid of the. What was it called again? No, the Executive order. Yeah. State of emergency. So maybe these signs will change. But I think in the last few years that people have been taught to think this way.

Absolutely.

If it's a sniffle, you just muscle it through. And now I think it's going to take. I hope that those numbers will change, but I think it's up to us in school districts and community and nurses to educate people on that. And just, again, we do give parents mixed messages. I know we have another panel to do that's kind of just my perspective.

I did want to ask the representative from the Fresno county office of schools, and you're one of our 58 counties here, so thank you. We're all different. And even in your district, you have probably a couple of dozen school districts.

32.

How many?

We have 32 in Fresno county.

Yeah. So the big part about the pandemic and learning loss is that kids are behind in a lot of things, math and reading and science, and we have kids in school, and we had one of our kids that we're doing a tutoring with them, and we pay the high school kid extra money to come and help with that. But not all parents can afford that or figure it out. And so that's one of the things that when I pushed forward along with all of us, Ludswitch.

It wasn't me. The learning loss block grant, we had hoped that districts would do just, you know, that assumes that you can find people and hire people. Has it been a success? Are you having additional tutoring and learning coaches to help? Can you paint a picture of what we've been doing in your county?

In Fresno county, it has helped. In Fresno county, we have been able to do some things, but it's what you just said, it's hard finding the staff to be able to do that. We've lost a lot of staff and hiring new ones. I can never remember in my career a more difficult time finding staff than now. We open jobs and sometimes we don't get a lot of people that apply. It's never been like that in my career.

And so I think finding those people has been the thing that has been difficult, but I do think it's making a difference when we're able to find the staff to do it.

Where do you think the bulk of the, in your county, your 33 districts, the bulk of the block grant is being utilized.

I would have to get back to you on that information. I could get you that information, like exactly where...

Well, just what's your intuition. What are you thinking? Where do you kind of see where it's going?

I think it's really helped with some of that learning loss, putting programs in place that help with that. There's been a lot of after school work that's been done to help with that. There's been a lot of trying to push in services during the school day when they can. So I think that it has helped. But I would have to get back to you on exactly like which school districts are where we've seen the most gains and things like that.

It's hiring people.

People is hard to find.

That goes back to the catch 22 there. But the stuff has been successful is hiring additional people to help your existing educators on the school sites, whether it's during the school day or after school.

Right? Yes.

I think that's what, not just this Committee, but oversight and our Budget Committee. We want to know where is the money going, how is it being utilized, what's working? Because you can't do a redo with little kids.

No, you're right. We cannot do that.

Yes. Thank you.

Thank you. I have questions for all three of our panelists. First of all, thank you. The education Committee staff has told me that we are very privileged to have, all three of you are leading experts in your respective fields, and so we really appreciate you sharing your expertise. I want to start, before I forget, with Ms. Chang following on. Mr. Mccarthy, we both have teenage daughters, and so we're always bringing our experience at home.

In terms of the mixed messages, my wife and I, we came out of the pandemic hearing the message that not only should we be taking care of ourselves, but we should be thinking about those around us. And so if there's any doubt about whether you should be going back into the classroom, if we're coughing, if we're sneezing, they shouldn't be in the classroom because they might spread all these nasty respiratory viruses that have been circulating this past school year.

And so my daughter got one of those letters from form letters from the school district saying that you've had X number of absences, you're at risk of being classified as chronically absent. And my wife was so upset with the letter that she said she wanted to sue our school district for emotional distress. But that goes to the point 1 of the many issues that we're discussing in the Legislature is whether our school funding should be based on enrollment versus Ada average daily attendance.

Do you feel that the current funding model based on average daily attendance, does that help or hurt in terms of this crisis of chronic absenteeism?

Yeah, I think. Let me say two things. I want to just back up to the truancy and the kind of approach to notification. Part of the challenge is, I think we've been in a system where families are sort of scolded when their kids miss school, as opposed to the notification being, hey, I know you've missed school. Is there support or help that you need?

And even when kids have had excused absences, one of the challenges that we're facing is that we didn't have any ways so that when you want kids to stay home from school because they're ill and you don't want to share anything, that they can stay learning if they're not feeling that bad.

And we have to actually invest better in other ways of kids being able to make up for learning if we need them to stay home because it's infectious and you don't want them in the classroom. And right now we kind of have an either or situation. That's not helping. In addition, we have to look carefully at our language to shift away from it to being a blame and a punitive approach to saying, hey, I know you've missed.

How do we help make sure that you don't suffer any consequences for the amount of time you've lost. What additional supports do we need to provide you? Because I think even families and kids who've done well when they miss 10 days of geometry, it's really challenging in high school ages. It's really hard for kids to make up, and we haven't figured out that mechanism. So that's just on that side. The average daily attendant versus enrollment is a complicated question to answer.

There's actually a good, brief right pace that tries to outline the challenges and issues. On one hand, when we Fund based on average daily attendance, we are sending the message that showing up to school matters. We're looking at it. We're caring about it. I actually think if you could find other mechanisms beyond just funding, but through how we review data, how we support an ESsa accountability average daily tenants we've had for years.

S accountability chronic absence part of school accountability has been much more recent, and it's probably worth a review. What I have also heard people say is, well, if we shift to enrollment, then that means we don't have to care about this anymore, when that's absolutely not true.

So I think the challenge, though, is, as you've said, that the problem of average daily attendance is that it actually can sometimes penalize more heavily the districts that have the greatest poverty, which have been struggling because of poverty related issues. They were hardest hit by the pandemic. And the truth is, if the kid is in your school at any point in time, you still have to have the people and the resources to support them. So that's the problem with average daily attendance.

If you can weight things heavily enough, maybe you can address it. So the question is, how do we still create an incentive for people to pay attention to attendance, while how do we not penalize districts for serving harder to serve populations who may show up to school less? And it's, how do you balance those? Know, one person who might be helpful to look at this is Superintendent Tony Smith, who used to be a Superintendent in Oakland, California.

And then he went to Illinois, and he's back working for the San Diego County office of Ed. When he was at the Superintendent of Illinois, shifted Illinois from away from average daily attendance to an enrollment based system. But he did it based on looking at what is adequate funding in Illinois. So it was actually making sure they understood fully what was adequacy of funding and then worked towards the adequacy model in order to improve it.

And it might be worth a conversation since he knows both our systems quite well.

Okay, thank you. Going back to your slides, you particularly flagged the over 40% in chronic absence in California for kindergarten. And I think either you or one of your previous speakers talked about perhaps parents not sending their kids for kindergarten.

That was Heather.

Yeah, Dr. Hough. Okay. Would you concur that that could contribute to that?

I think those are two different issues. Heather is discussing an enrollment challenge, and where are we losing kids? And they're not enrolling, and then they're not actually even on the books to be counted as chronically absent. So there may be families who aren't sending their kids to kindergarten. The high levels of kindergarten chronic absence also reflect at the fact that so many kids never went to preschool during the pandemic because people were very nervous about health issues.

Again, all very understandable, but one of the biggest assets for reducing chronic absence in kindergarten is actually going to preschool, because you get into the habit of regular routines, you connect to kids, there is a certain amount of immunity you get from being around other kids. There's a whole set of things that. That helps you, and it helps you get through the separation anxiety. That can be a huge issue.

So we have now many, many children that did not go to preschool and also talk about where we're having staffing shortages. It's not just in the K 12 system. It's also in the preschool system, which is often less paid. So I think that's a challenge. But then we also have a question of what's happening to the kids who've disappeared completely from our roles. And there may be kindergartners who haven't enrolled. It may be people going into home school.

One of the things that we saw during the pandemic is we have a data tool that we give to districts so they can look at their chronic absence levels, and we have levels of absenteeism. Kids who are 10 to 20% or moderate. 20% or more used to be our severe. We actually had to add a category called extreme chronic absence. Kids who are missing 50% or more of school, so they're out more than they're in school.

And that is, to me, one of the greatest warning signs that these kids are actually possibly not going to be enrolled the next year because they have such sporadic contact. What's our strategy for really reengaging and connecting with them? How do we connect to the families who aren't enrolling their kids? And if kids aren't enrolling in kindergarten or first, when they do enroll, the challenges for the classroom teacher in being able to incorporate them with the rest of their classmates will be huge.

I think Dr. Thurman, Superintendent Thurman said that as for the, I think the number was 150,000 or so students that have just dropped off the radar, that people are still trying to figure out where exactly they went. Do you have any further information on that?

I think we need to do more data, but what I would look at is there's the kids coming into the system, and then there's the kids who are in the high school level. And I actually think that some of this is really early dropout happening at the high school level because we're seeing many more young people having to take on more responsibility. They're working, they're taking care of family Members.

And when we went back to in person learning, many learning situations don't accommodate easily the kind of responsibilities that they're taking on. So I think it would be really important to understand if there is an issue of attracting families into our public education system?

Or are we losing kids, students at the high school level because they're taking on responsibilities and we don't have a public education system that responds to their need so that they don't have to decide between being a responsible family Member and helping with income or being in work.

And I do think that places that do like CTE work, that is really important, having partnerships with employers and business so that students can be in school but also earning a wage, those are all things that we should look at. So the solutions are really different. There might be a high school solution. There might be something connected to transitional kindergarten that we could be looking at that really affects our youngest kids. And this is what I mean by integrating the work into our existing initiatives.

Mr. Chair, may I expand on that a little bit, if I may? I believe that that's a cultural issue, and I can relate to that 100%, because when I came here at the age of 15 from Mexico, I came here to work. I didn't come here to go to school. So in our culture, we take responsibilities at a very early age. Being the oldest of eight, that automatically comes on the older kids to be able to get a job and help support the younger siblings.

With that big number of 150,000 kids that we don't know where they are, I do believe that some of those would be in the farming communities, and a big majority of them is going to be because we take on on those responsibilities of having to help our parents be able to provide. That is a big issue. Again, I lived it personally myself, and I think that we can expand that educational opportunity to be at night. That's what I did.

I worked eight hour days and then went to school at night and an adult school, and I was able to get my GED, my high school diploma, all of the time going at night school. So I think that's a cultural issue, and that's something that we need to be able to provide those opportunities for those that have to do the obligations that we have to do just because that's part of our culture.

But if we don't provide them with an option to go to school at night, which is what I did, and I know it's even more challenging in rural areas because the farming community keeps moving based on the season of the fruits, vegetables, whatever they have to do, keep moving from the Coachella Valley to Fresno, back and forth all the time.

So I do believe that we need to start looking at providing that option for younger kids to be able to attain that education, because that is really one of the reasons why you are missing 152,000 students. Because times are hard. We have to have two jobs, sometimes three jobs to be able to make ends meet. And if we don't really invest in providing that opportunity for younger kids that have to take on the responsibilities, we're going to keep on missing that number even bigger numbers.

Again, I just wanted to share.

Yeah, no, thank you. That's an important perspective and life experience. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. I'd like to move on to Dr. Hough. So I have to say I think Dr. Darling-Hammond and Superintendent Thurman emphasized the hope in terms of where they're looking for hope in terms of the $24 billion investments that California has made. Perhaps early possible indications of learning recovery from programs like community schools, tutoring, literacy, coaches, meals.

After on and on the long lists of programs that both of them highlighted, you're coming back with what I've been hearing more. I guess I could call it the doom and gloom message that I've been seeing emphasized in the media, and rightfully so. We're not here to sugarcoat or to put a spin on what's happening.

We're here to try to get to the truth so that we can get a real sense of where our kids are at and what do we need to do to help them. I highlighted in your comments the pandemic nationally has wiped out two decades of growth. And that assessment, would you say that applies equally to California?

Yeah, I definitely would. And I think my perspective on the, I don't mean to come with a doom and gloom perspective. I mean to come with a realistic perspective. And so much of what's driving what I brought you here today is not just what the data show us, which is we have seen completely unprecedented declines in student learning, and we don't have any experience accelerating learning to that extent. We just don't.

And you pair that with, I'm in regular communication with school and district leaders who are working so hard, relentlessly hard and not seeing the kinds of gains that they want to be seeing. The kinds of progress they're seeing are often slow because they're facing so many challenges locally. I think one of the things to highlight, and the next panel will talk about this, but we put so much money into the system, but all of it relies on being able to hire people.

And we've underinvested in our schools and particularly in our staffing for so many years that we don't have a workforce that's just waiting to now have jobs available. We don't have people with training. We don't have people who want to or could take those positions. So the kind of investment that we would need to make, given where we started, is a decades long investment. And I think the challenge right now is that we actually aren't necessarily seeing a decades long investment in our schools.

We're seeing a one time investment in a lot of cases that might not sustain. Into the.

And along those lines. One of the points that Dr. Darling Hammond raised was the state test results showing that those 740,000 students who took the smarter balance test in both 2021 and 2022 experienced steeper learning gains in most grade levels than in the years before the pandemic. What is your interpretation of?

I haven't seen that analysis, so I can't speak to what I believe that it might say or not say. The one thing I know is that we have 6 million students in this state, fewer now because of our declines. But only about 25% of students took the test in 2021, which means that that's not all the students, nor is it a representative sample. There's a lot we don't know about why students took that test or who took that test.

So I think that there's reasons not to put too much emphasis on that. I do think that if we're seeing those kinds of gains, we should look at that. I'm not saying we should dismiss it, but I think that we have data at scale that show that students are really far behind. And I think we lose more by not being concerned enough than we lose by being optimistic.

Okay. I represent a portion of Los Angeles Unified School District, and I know the Superintendent, Carvaho, very charismatic leader. He's been touting how LA unified has made dramatic gains during the pandemic, and he attributes them to the before and after school tutoring programs as well as to the summer school. Do you have any opinion as to what he was describing?

I do think LA has a really strong and really aggressive strategic plan, very detailed and very focused on student learning. I have to imagine that that can and will have impacts. I think that the thing about the Nape is it is very few students, and that's where that indication is coming from. Only 4000 students statewide. I can't recall the exact number in Los Angeles, but substantially fewer than that. So I just think it's worth thinking about what different tests tell us that.

The NAPE is a national assessment designed to look at national trends, for the most part, with some variation within, whereas our California tests are designed to measure the learning of every single student. And that gives us a depth of knowledge about what's happening in our state that other tests just don't.

And you also made the point that California, both before the pandemic as well as now, still has lower average scores and greater disparities among student groups relative to other states. I would imagine that is because we have a larger number, higher percentages of disadvantaged students, Low income students.

It's actually not just that. When you separate out our students into higher income or lower income or white or non white, what we see is that our higher income students actually outperform students in other states. Our lower income students underperform compared to other states. So it's the bifurcation. It's not just that we have a different student population, although we also do.

Okay, thank you for that. I'm going to remember that last but not least, Ms. Frazier. Dr. Frazier. Ms. Frazier, Ms. Frazier. Ms. Frazier, so I've heard that Fresno county is a model of how you've been able. Your Fresno County County Office of Education has collaborated with the County Department of Behavioral Services. Do you have any sense as to why every county can't do what you've been able to do?

I think the reason we've been able to do what we've done is because of relationships. I think everything we've done centers around relationships. We have met with many other counties and they are starting to put this in place. We also are putting out a toolkit, which should be out in the next month to help other counties. It may look different for them, but at least it gives them an outline of how to start.

So I think we are seeing a trend of it starting in other counties. But I think our success comes down to relationships, really does.

All right. And earlier today, I had a meeting with the Green Dot charter schools, and they described a successful program that they have, where they have students earning their MSWs or their other qualifications, doing their clinical work at the schools. So that it's a win win. It's a win for the students that they're getting their clinical hours in. It's a win for the social work students, and it's a win for the high school students that were getting that support.

Is that a model that makes sense to you that we should try to replicate?

Absolutely. At our ctech high school, we're getting ready. We're working with the community college now to start that mental health strand. We've had it in other areas where they actually are graduating with an very, very high percentage rate that are making it through with an AA and then. And then starting college, but, yes, I think that's an excellent model.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I know Vice Chair Dahle had some questions, so let me.

It over to her.

I apologize. I had to step out for another quick meeting. You mentioned earlier about a Stanford study. Is that in this material? Referenced in this material somewhere?

No, it's not. It's a study that was conducted by Professor Tom D. at Stanford.

Okay. And that was in regards to the students that we haven't been able to locate. I'm saying locate, but we don't know if they've moved to another school or out of state or where they are.

Yeah. The research team used census data and enrollment data to try to create an estimate of how many students aren't accounted for having left the state. And the estimate they came up with was 152,000 students unaccounted for in California.

Okay. Thank you. I will go find that. But does it break it down to the school districts at all, or just the General, the whole state?

I don't believe so, but I'm not sure.

Okay. Thank you. And then again, I apologize that I had to step out. But you mentioned local barriers. Could you dig into that a little bit, or did you already answer that question?

Yeah, I didn't detail it too much in my comments because I think it's a lot of what the rest of the panelists here and in the next panel are talking about. So a lot of what the districts are discussing is that they're dealing with issues of chronic absenteeism. If the students aren't coming to class, it's difficult to catch them up on material, provide intervention support.

They have a lot of open positions that they are unable to fill, both teaching positions, but also supplemental support positions, counseling positions, substitute positions. They're also, in addition to students being far behind, are dealing with really unprecedented kinds of behavior, and that's related to the mental health issues that my panelist here discussed.

So they're trying to accelerate learning, but then the circumstances feel very unstable and at the district level, and a lot of times throughout the schools as well, there's just a really high level of external politics that have been in schools as well. So increased incidences of racism and racial hate, homophobic hate, that wasn't something that they had to deal with to the same extent prior to the pandemic.

Thank you.

Any other questions? I have one more follow-up for Dr. Hough. Do you have a sense, looking back on these three years and some of the early scores that we're seeing coming out of the pandemic, what the impact of these school closures were on academic achievement?

There isn't any really good data about this because nobody collected data on how many days schools were open or closed so that we could do a really systematic analysis. I think that from just the nationwide, the NAEP data, it doesn't look like there's any correlation between states that kept schools closed for longer versus those that opened them. But again, that's not a very rigorous analysis. We just don't have the data to be able to answer that question in a rigorous manner.

Okay. Thank you. Seeing no further questions. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your testimony. All right. And thank you to the last remaining panel for your patience. Last but not least, our third panel is California's education workforce, addressing many of the issues that we've been hearing from the first two panels.

Like to welcome Tara Kini, Chief of Staff and Director of State Policy from the Learning Policy Institute, Heather Armelino, Superintendent, Enterprise Elementary School District in Shasta County, Dr. Bryan Johnson, Director of Certificated Workforce Management, Los Angeles Unified, and Barry Roth, President, San Juan Teachers Association. Welcome, everyone. Let me start by calling on Ms. Kini.

Great. Thank you so much for having me today to address you. I'm Tara Kini. I'm Chief of Staff at the Learning Policy Institute. For the past several years, LPI has been studying teacher shortages, teacher supply, and demand, both in California and nationally. So today I'm going to give you a bit of a snapshot of California's teacher workforce as we emerge from the pandemic. Next slide, please.

So I'd like to start first with why this topic matters. First and foremost for student learning, particularly given the enormous challenge we're facing in supporting students' learning recovery. We know that teacher certification experience and stability matter for student achievement. Research conducted by LPI, pictured here, shows that California districts with more fully credentialed teachers and experienced teachers had better achievement, and this was particularly true for Black and Latino students.

Research also indicates that teachers without full preparation leave at far higher rates than fully prepared teachers, contributing to shortages and undermining school improvement efforts. Finally, this is a core equity issue because these characteristics of teachers are inequitably distributed. So now I want to look at how teacher shortages have evolved in California over the past several years, which is a picture, I think, that's deeply concerning but also hopeful, as we heard a bit about earlier today. Next slide.

A key indicator of shortages is the number of substandard credentials and permits that are issued. These tripled between 2012 and 2018, with the greatest increases in the number of emergency-style permits and waivers. The good news is that we're seeing this trend begin to turn, which we think indicates that the state's considerable investments in the teacher pipeline since 2016 are beginning to pay off.

The number of fully prepared new entrants is significantly increasing, which you see here in navy, while the number of emergency-style permits is shrinking, shown here in red. And the most recent investments, the largest investments made since 2021, aren't even appearing in this data yet due to data lags and the natural pace of implementation. So that said, we still have significant numbers of new teachers coming in on substandard credentials and permits. It's about a third of new teachers in 2021.

And to your question, Assembly Member Dahle, it's about 12,000 teachers there. So this has serious implications for student achievement and equitable access to opportunities. And in addition to teacher shortages, about 90% of districts surveyed by the California School Boards Association last March reported shortages of paras, as well as counselors, psychologists, and social workers. Next slide. Of course, shortages don't impact all districts equally. We've created an interactive map, which you see pictured here, that allows you to explore teacher workforce conditions in your districts.

In general, districts serving more students from low-income families have higher turnover rates, they hire more new and beginning teachers, and they often hire more teachers on substandard credentials and permits. And of course, these are the students most in need of a strong, stable educator workforce to support their learning recovery.

Next slide. In the past couple of years, the state has invested significantly into strengthening California's educator workforce through teacher residencies, through the Golden State Teacher Grant Program, the Classified Staff Program, and more investments you see here. And there's some evidence that these investments are making a difference. Next slide. A new study from LPI, which you should have in your packet today, it's hot off the presses today, shows that the number of people completing teacher preparation programs in California is increasing.

Between 2017 and 2021, the number of California completers applying for their preliminary credentials is up by 37%. Next slide. Another promising trend is that the pool of completers has become more racially and ethnically diverse. Based on this survey data, more than half of respondents applying for their preliminary credential last year were teachers of color, with the greatest growth among new Latino teachers. Next slide. Residency programs now prepare about one in 10 new California teachers, and about 60% of residency completers are teachers of color.

Completers of these pathways report themselves as feeling among the most prepared of California's new teachers. Early data suggests that residents have high retention rates. Among the first cohort of state-funded residents, 88% were still teaching two years after graduating. Next slide. So these data are consistent with national research on teacher residencies and a number of states are investing in this approach. None as great as California, however. Next slide.

So, based on what I've shared today, it appears we're approaching a point where our recent state investments are really beginning to kick in and can potentially help close that gap in fully prepared teachers. On the recruitment side, it will be critical to stay the course and focus on strong implementation, really giving these programs a chance to take hold and mature.

The state might also consider a more robust state recruitment and communication strategy to help potential candidates really understand the full array of financial supports available to them as well as the different pathways into teaching. Higher ed capacity building is also crucial, especially to expand special ed and P3 programs. On the retention side, we'll need to really think about how to retain the teachers that we have.

We know that compensation matters for retention, so the Golden State Teacher Grant Program certainly helps with affordability issues for new recruits, but additional steps could be taken for existing teachers. The National Board Incentive Program for high-poverty schools is another key retention strategy. And of course, since compensation is largely a local matter, LCFF investments that support wages and working conditions are also foundational. Thank you for your time and I look forward to answering questions later.

Thank you very much. Next, we have Superintendent Heather Armelino, who is appearing virtually.

Yes, I'm here.

Yes, we can hear you. Welcome.

All right. Thank you for having me. As you said, I'm representing some of the smaller school districts up in Northern California. I'm in Shasta County with 27 districts and 26,000 students. Mine is actually the second largest district in the county with about 3,600 kids and we're a little over 70% of socioeconomically disadvantaged students. So plenty of challenges that we've been facing, but we are also hopeful and seeing recovery. I have many single-school districts in our area, so I'm representing them today as well.

The additional funding that we've received recently has opened up such amazing opportunities for us and is a big part of why we're seeing recovery. But the staffing shortages that we're experiencing are really limiting our ability to use it. So I just wanted to share a little bit about what that looks like for us here. I'm very fortunate that all of my teacher positions are filled, but we have a number of interns and teachers on permits that don't actually have a credential.

And of course, that is a concern. And it's exciting to hear of the residencies and scholarships that are underway to improve that over the years. And I would add to that the additional need for special education teachers. I'm a former special ed teacher myself, and it is a very hard job. We really need to find ways to incentivize skilled individuals to continue to seek that pathway.

I think what we experience to be the most problematic up in the north state is our classified employees, specifically with our paraprofessionals. So we received all this funding through ELOP for our after-school programs, which is super exciting. And in reality, we are serving way fewer students than we were in 2019. So we actually have more vacancies than we have filled positions right now. We have only 15 employees and 29 vacancies. We have more students waitlisted than are enrolled.

And of course, this is something that is a high demand for families and it helps fill in that piece of extended learning for their school day. So in 2019, we had over 600 kids in the program and fewer than 100 on a waitlist, and now we're only serving 282 and a waitlist of 370. So we're trying to do everything we can think of to entice people to work. We've offered teachers and substitute teachers full-day pay to work in the afternoon.

We offer our classified folks that work during the school day, our highest step on the salary schedule to come and work in the afternoon as well. And we still are just really desperately trying to find enough people to keep our program running. So that's a huge concern. The same thing has happened with our summer learning, which we partnered with the YMCA and just offered a really robust program that was rich academics all morning and enrichment in the afternoon.

But we were only able to serve 200 kids, which is roughly 6% of our students. It's just not enough. We'd really love to be able to invite many of our students and know that our families have somewhere safe to send their children and that they're making up that learning loss during that time. It's similar with our after-school tutoring.

We've tried to utilize our teachers and pay them well, but we're only scratching the surface there with about 5% of our kids that we're able to reach for tutoring. So what happens is we don't have enough supervision on the playground and people serving lunch and driving buses and therefore after-school care. So our administrators are filling many roles and our existing staff, we're asking them to do more and our people are just really weary.

So it is difficult to compete with fast food work with other minimum wage jobs. It's not easy work, especially right now, and they've got paraprofessional exams and background checks and often fewer hours. And it's hard to make it attractive for people to come back right now. And we probably in the last two years, were able to raise classified salaries by about 12%. And that was so that we could address the minimum wage issue and get that base up.

But because we have a bargaining unit, of course we want to share that same increase across the board. So the concern is they deserve to be paid more, and we probably need to increase that more than we have. But the concern is how expensive that is to do across all classifications, and then can we sustain that in an ongoing manner as our one-time funds are going away? So that's one of our concerns.

We're experiencing the same shortages, of course, with mental health, and even in our community trying to get kids into outside services, there just are huge waiting lists. It's very difficult to find that kind of help for our kids.

So some of the things that have been really helpful that I hope we can continue are certainly that the funding for our classified in particular and our certificated, the incentives for our paraprofessionals to continue their education, the ability to use retirees as substitutes has been really instrumental in keeping us going because we've had very few days that we're fully covered with subs. So sometimes we're combining classes and principals are teaching, and it's not ideal.

So the extension on that 30-day sub-limit has been really helpful, too. And I would ask that that also apply for special education because we just have too many vacancies. And for our interns, I think giving them a third-year probationary status would be very helpful. It doesn't often feel fair to make that decision in two years when they've had no experience and are so new to the field. So let's see. I think that's kind of the picture that I just wanted to paint.

And now see if anybody has questions.

Thank you, Superintendent. We're going to give an opportunity for the Committee to ask questions after the rest of the panel. So thank you. Next, we have Dr. Bryan Johnson with the Los Angeles Unified.

Good afternoon, Chair Muratsuchi, Vice Chair Dahle, and Members. My name is Dr. Bryan Johnson, and I currently serve as the Director of Certificated Recruitment and Educator Pipeline Programs for the Los Angeles Unified School District. And I'm pleased to join you all today on behalf of our chief human resources officer, Ms. Eliana Davilos, and our Superintendent, Mr. Alberto Carvalho. In L.A. Unified, during the 2021-2022 school year, we hired nearly 3,300 certificated employees which represents a 75% increase over the previous year.

This year we've already hired nearly 3,000 certificated employees, and we anticipate that we will exceed last year's total by a significant amount. Now, statewide educator supply data, as shared earlier, indicates that the number of credentials issued in the last several years has increased. Now, this is good news, but the issue is much more complex. Multiple subjects' credential issuance, and I'm talking about preliminary credentials in that time has increased more than 30%.

However, the percentage of single subject credentials and education specialist credentials has risen only 5% and 15%, respectively. Science credential issuance actually decreased nearly 10% in that time, while world languages, English, and mathematics credential issuance have remained relatively static. In the same time, demand has increased sharply. In the 2016-2017 school year, we hired 35 math teachers. This year to date, we've hired 180. In that same year, we hired 57 science teachers. This year we've hired 118.

English hires in that time doubled almost from 145 to 256, and same with world language new hires almost doubling from 33 to 60. This increased demand is also consistent with statewide trends and in many cases outpaces the supply of available teachers in these specific subject areas. Los Angeles Unified and other districts throughout the state are finding it challenging to meet the demand for fully credentialed teachers, as has been shared by a number of my colleagues today.

Therefore, we are increasingly hiring teachers serving on those intern credentials and the provisional permits to round out our teaching workforce. And this increased reliance on teachers serving under these nonrenewable permits creates potential disruptions to continuity of instruction for our students. Our data shows, and it's consistent with the statewide data that's been shared earlier, that teachers hired in L.A. Unified under provisional permits experience a higher rate of attrition than credentialed teachers.

In this tight labor market, schools that are serving our most vulnerable families are often the least desirable for some candidates, and this exacerbates these issues of educational equity that we've heard about today. The cost of living in California also compounds the problem. The lack of availability of affordable housing impedes the recruitment of teachers and other certificated professionals, and it has an impact on our ability to retain educators as well. The cost of becoming a teacher is also very high.

If a teacher candidate earns a baccalaureate degree and a teaching credential at a public University in California, the cost in tuition, fees, and housing can easily exceed $100,000. In order to increase the supply of teachers, we must seek to increase the value Proposition and reduce barriers to entering the profession. In Los Angeles Unified, we've been very successful in staving off the full impact of the teacher shortage by growing our own teachers.

As the largest school district in the state, we are able to employ our economies of scale to offer district intern credential programs in eight different preliminary credential areas, as well as numerous added authorization programs. This is a strategy that county offices of education and other local education agencies which are already doing this, they could explore expanding in order to support some smaller and medium-sized districts who are facing staff shortages. These grow-your-own programs are also effective at promoting diversity in our workforce.

We are currently preparing 55 interns who identify as African American, and this is more than almost every other program in the state. Our career letter programs, which are sponsored in part by the Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program Grant, serve nearly 300 classified employees seeking to become teachers, and most of those employees, the overwhelming majority of them, identify as persons of color.

We also benefit greatly from our strong relationships with local institutions of higher education who provide over 60% of our new teachers each year, including nearly 100 per year, through the residency programs supported by the Teacher Residency Grants. These investments from the Legislature are paying dividends in terms of long-term teacher recruitment and pipeline building, and these investments should not only continue, they should be expanded to further reduce the financial and logistical barriers to entering the profession.

In sum, the teacher shortage is real, but it is much more nuanced than has been portrayed in the media and elsewhere. Districts like ours, with the help of Legislature-supported programs and by leveraging our own funding sources and our built-in expertise, are making tremendous progress in building out long-term grassroots educator pipelines. Institutions of higher education are producing more teachers than they did five years ago, but there are some particular subject areas that require additional attention and support.

Demand has increased throughout the state, which necessitates a very real conversation like this one about what districts, institutes of higher education, and the Legislature can do to mitigate the impact of future shortages and ensure the sustainability of the teaching profession, and along with it, public schooling in California. On behalf of the Los Angeles Unified School District, I thank you for the opportunity to address you today, and I would be pleased to answer any other questions you may have.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And last but not least, Barry Roth with the San Juan Teachers Association.

Yeah, thank you for having us here to talk with you to answer questions that you may have. I'm Barry Roth. I currently serve as President of San Juan Teachers Association. I've been an educator for 25 years, serving in the classroom. The eight years previous to coming into my current position, I was coordinator of community schools as well as serving in the classroom. So I know that work quite well too.

What I'd like to do is paint a picture of what it's like for teachers, for school sites, for students on a daily basis and break it down into maybe three tiers. We've been hearing a ton about the shortages that's evident and that's no mystery to any of us. But where are those? And we've heard some of that in our district. San Juan is a large district, but as we speak to people throughout the district, it's the same story, right?

Teachers, of course we're hearing about that and we'll talk about how that impacts students, nurses and sometimes people think, well, what does a school nurse do? Are they just there when a student falls on the playground and needs a little attention? And probably many of you know this already, it's so much more. The student needs insulin if they need different health care.

We're lucky with the advances in modern medicine that so many students are coming to our schools now able to attend, but that have a high medical need. These nurses are essential. And I'm going to talk about some creative things we've done, but also some of the that it may not be that lasting impact. Our classified staff, we've talked about them. So our classified staff are the folks that might be an instructional assistant in a classroom helping with special education, front office, all of those shortages again.

And right now, as we've talked some statistics, currently as of today, we're just under or just over 50 of our members, teachers, that we still need to hire in our district, and 550 classified members, vacancies, and we're recruiting as hard as we can. We're very lucky. And I want to note before I move into the other things in San Juan, we're very fortunate that we're collaborative. Actually, more than that, we're really partners with the district.

One thing we don't disagree about is we all care about kids and we'll all give our all for the kids. And so we think creatively to come up with solutions. One thing that we've done is how can we support those who are willing to work over. Now principals, they're salaried, they do work over hours. They don't necessarily aren't able to take that on.

But what we do for our teachers, those maybe in secondary that take on an extra period will get paid for that roughly 20% more, right? They go up from, we consider 1.0 FTE, full-time employment. They might go to a 1.2. We have nurses working at a 1.4. They're taking on 40% more of a caseload so they can care for their students because they've taken an oath and they can't turn their back.

But we know that's not sustainable and soon they will just go to other employment. Our counselors, and we talked about earlier CTE programs. So counselors are there for social emotional health. Absolutely. But as students move through the system, how do we get them into CTE programs? How do we get them into college and other careers? So what our counselors, because we have a great shortage, they're working over too, to a 1.2 or more.

And so they don't have time to give that in-depth support for students that they normally would. And you know what that leads to? It's burnout. We're also very lucky in our district, in our office, although I'm only a year and a half in this position, our office itself, our staff has been there for many years. We've never seen this type of situation with daily calls that at least one of us is feeling a daily call where we just listen.

And folks are crying and they're saying, I can't continue to do this. What can you do? What kind of leave can I take? And it's on that every day we get that and we've never seen that before. So we have people taking mental health leaves, personal leaves, because, and I'll talk about a situation that happened, but where they might not be able to be written out by a physician because they can't get in to see one.

And so they take a personal leave in that financial hit that may occur to their family and having to make those very difficult decisions. One way to think about this is a glass of water. You may have heard this analogy. It's been used a lot. But if folks are in need, they're very thirsty and they ask for some water, and I've got a glass of water, I'm going to provide that. And then someone else needs it.

And the first person needs a little more. Eventually that glass of water, right? It's empty. And when there is no more, I can't give any more. And that's where our school staff, not just the teachers who I represent, but our entire system, that is where they're at. And I'd like to provide a little bit of an example using one school site. But we're seeing it at all of our schools, we're seeing it throughout the state.

So one of our elementaries at fantastic elementary, very diverse student body. Their history has been that they're very nimble in the way that they can meet student needs no matter who comes to them every year. Very stable staff. It's one of those schools you look at like, how are you doing that? And you go and you study them and it's just so impressed. But this year, let's look at their kindergarten teachers.

So two kindergarten teachers, it's been so stressful for them because they don't have the instructional aide support for their special education students. And we're very lucky to have the ELO funds and we're hiring so many IAs and they're trying to remediate the students, but they don't have that either. So one of the teachers had to take a mental health leave. So this individual takes a mental health leave. Now her teaching partner is trying to help the subs that come in every day.

What does it do to that teacher? Now her workload is unbearable. The principal is coming in to help, which is great and we love that that happens. But now that principal is not there, helping the front staff, connecting with parents, providing other teachers with support, and doing everything that they need to do. Again, ELO funds, fantastic. And we have intervention teachers that are just pulling small groups of kids to work with them on their individual needs. If you can group them, great.

If not, then you're one-on-one and you're providing this rich amount of support. But they're having to cover the teachers that are out. So now kids aren't getting that support and we're not hitting those metrics that we would hope we would do through that funding yet, hopefully, we will get there. But yet at this year that isn't happening. And then what it does to the rest of the school.

If I'm not pulling a small group of students and you're expecting me to that day, but I have to let you know, like, hey, I'm covering this class, then you're scrambling to try to figure out what you're going to do because you love your students and want the best for them. So now that shakes up the whole school. Although everyone loves the kids at that school, everyone is just feeling tapped out. And we see that at every school, not every school, but nearly every school.

We're a large district, 9th largest in the state, over 65 schools, plenty of other programs and we see it throughout. Just a quick two other examples. We've talked about new teachers and there are so many great things going on with new teachers and we have a very impressive induction program moving our new teachers through clearing their credentials and many have copied and come to us for help. What we're not able to do, again, I use the example of principals being spread thin.

They're not being able to provide that support. Our mentor teachers at sites who are our senior teachers, they're not able to do it because they've taken on extra classes, extra caseloads, and things like that. So our new teachers are not getting the support they normally would. And everyone loves working with a new teacher because they're full of life and they're full of hope and it's fantastic. But again, if my glass of water is empty, I can't help that person. I don't have the time.

I will mention, even with new teachers so far removed from the classroom, our HR Department, and with respect, I mean, that is their role, they have been short-staffed, so it takes them a long time to, one, process paperwork. As a new teacher, you come with all of your paperwork, and because as you've heard, all of us are hiring so many people that it takes so long to get through that.

Now as a new teacher, I'm stressed out because, hey, where am I on the salary scale? How's this going to work? I think I should be here. And our HR Department is fantastic and folks can call me, I can call the Director and we've got the communication, but if there's just not people to get through the work, again, bandwidth is limited of our new teachers and so we're worried about that. The last example I'll use is special education. So again, shortage of IAs.

Special education teachers are struggling at meeting the minutes that their students need who are receiving the special education support and so they're not able to provide. So they're working through lunch, they're working through their prep, they're trying to manage their large caseloads and although we stay in compliance, again, it's so taxing.

And we've heard about special education where if they don't leave their profession entirely, then what they're doing is they're going from our MOD severe, the students who need the most help, to mild MOD and then they leave special education. In our district alone, we have tons of openings in special education, but we have more than enough teachers with the credential who could teach it, but they can't continue to do it.

So the very last thing I will say to wrap up, we do try to remain hopeful and I really appreciate that Superintendent Thurmond started with that, that we're hopeful, and we have to be because that's what we do. And we work with kids every day. So if you don't remain hopeful, then there's a problem. So we do. And the resources and the funding and the innovation that's occurred has been fantastic for all of us.

But there aren't enough people, there isn't enough bandwidth, there's just not enough water to get the job done currently. So happy to answer any questions that come up.

Thank you. Questions from the Committee? Mr. McCarty?

Yes, thank you.

I have three questions, one for each panel. So first, for the Learning Policy Alliance. So a lot of the work and the recommendations that you worked on, and Linda Darling-Hammond, we put into action in budget proposals and things that I've worked on. The residency, the classified teacher, we've done a lot. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars, and I think they all work. Some work better than others. Now, as we're looking to potentially contract our budget, we have no idea this budget situation in a few months.

It could be the same. It could potentially be better. It could be more likely going the opposite direction. Which of the teacher recruitment and preparation, mainly teacher recruitment programs, do you think are most effective that we should zero in on and keep at it?

So I think the programs that we've had on programs that with your leadership, we got off the ground, the classified staff program, for example, that was brought back in 2016 is making a difference. Those Integrated Teacher Education Program Grants that were funded in 2016 are now producing undergraduates out of four-year preparation programs. But that program was funded one-time in 2016. It came back in last year's budget so we need time for the increased investments to take hold.

The majority of the investments came in in 2021 and 2022. So we are just beginning to see the impact of those investments and to see which ones are the most effective quite frankly. There's some early data that the residency programs are doing what we thought they would do, which is bring in a more diverse teacher workforce who is staying in the classroom. The Golden State Teacher Grants, those are being taken up by candidates.

We've seen a doubling of the number of Golden State Teacher Grants going out this year than last year. But I think staying the course with those investments, they are multi-year investments. I think we will continue to see the impact of them, judging from the early data, and hopefully, with that implementation, we'll be able to see which ones should remain.

So it's a little early. A week ago, you probably saw this, there was this ed source report, and it says California sinks millions into teacher residency, but many.

Yeah, I did see that article and appreciated the voices of the residents that it brought forth. I think it is very expensive. As Mr. Johnson laid out, to become a teacher in California and anywhere across the country.

But especially with our cost of living, I think there is opportunity in front of us to help teacher candidates blend and braid the funds that are available. So there's residency funding that can support stipends and tuition remission.

There are Golden State Teacher Grants that provide up to $20,000 per teacher candidate. But it's very hard for an individual candidate to navigate those programs.

Navigating or fronting the money.

I think it's both of those things. So not having to go into debt to become a teacher is our goal. Right. For young people, they're coming into a profession where they're going to get paid $0.80 on the dollar of other college educated professionals.

So not making them front the money is, I think, a policy goal that we should continue to attend to. But, yeah, helping them to navigate that financial aid system is still tricky. And I think there's some perhaps either policy tweaking or implementation support that we can provide so that candidates can fully take advantage of those programs.

Okay. Thank you. So my next question is for Mr. Johnson from LA Unified. And I know you're proud of your work. You talked about the amazing things you're doing. It didn't sound like you need anything from us.

And so a lot of times witnesses come up here and they just talk about how great it is, and they forget to talk about what we can do to help you maybe do more. So let me ask you that question. What more could the State of California do, the legislative process, the budget process, do to help you and your team expand what you're already doing well there?

Well, I think a lot of the investments that Ms. Kinney was talking about are spot on. I mean, I'll talk about the integrated teacher preparation grants. One of the things that when you're promoting integrated teacher prep programs where folks are earning their credentials as undergraduates, it actually takes the internships and the provisional internship permits and the short term staff permits off the table.

It makes it so that their only pathway, if they're going to choose an integrated pathway, they're going to choose that pathway before they even earn that baccalaureate degree, which is the minimum, to get a substitute permit or to get a short term staff permit or to become an intern.

So it's grabbing potential teachers before they have those other options. And frankly, when they also have a lot more supports in terms of student aid from the Federal Government as well as aid from the state government.

And then when we braid in Golden State Teacher Grant funds into that, I think, again, if the goal is to reduce barriers to entering the profession, to increase the number of teachers who are going to come, it's a value proposition, right?

Especially, I talked a lot about math and science teachers, right. Math and science teachers are absolutely crucial to a lot of the work that we're doing, not only in our district, but in districts throughout the state. And math and science teachers have a lot of people who are studying math and science at University, have a lot of options for professions, which, frankly, in many ways are a lot more remunerative than working in a school.

But if we can piece together all of these different programs. Look, if you wanted to become a teacher, you could become a teacher through an integrated program. You'll have your teaching credential by the time you graduate, and you will get a job immediately thereafter.

And by the way, we have all these other programs that can help support Golden State Teacher Grants, so on and so forth that can help support you in earning that goal. If you've already earned your degree, we've got these teacher residency programs that can help you earn your goal.

I think it's a matter of the financial support and also finding ways to demystify what it takes to become a teacher. It can seem really arcane and byzantine. Right. The process of becoming a teacher.

And one of the programs that I talked about, our career letter programs, one of our goals there in working with our classified employees, is, frankly, a lot of folks just don't have an idea of what it takes to become a teacher. Or they've heard a lot of different things, or they've heard things from administrators or teachers who became teachers 20-30 years ago when the processes were different.

And so being able to provide that individualized mentorship to people who are seeking to become teachers, being able to demystify both the profession itself and the process of getting into the profession, those are things that I think we should continue to invest in and just quite frankly, making it easier to become a teacher.

And I think some of the legislative changes that were made in the last few years in terms of the ability for folks to utilize college coursework to meet the basic skills requirement or the subject matter requirement, those are both excellent, and neither of those things cost a dime.

But that action really opened up the doors to so many more people to entering the teacher profession, not only as teachers, but as substitute teachers as well. The value proposition, I want to become a substitute teacher, but now I got to go take a test to prove that I know how to teach 8th grade math, English and writing. But if I've already did this at the University and now we have a means for that to happen.

And so I think continuing to explore ways, both ways that require budget appropriations and ways in which we can smartly ease regulation in order to be able to allow people who have demonstrated. It's like being a teacher, right. We don't want to just say, okay, the only way that you're going to be able to demonstrate mastery is by this one test. When we differentiate instruction, we want to be able to offer multiple ways for our students to be able to demonstrate mastery.

And so by finding different ways to, you know, I know you were a math major at Cal Tech, but I'm going to have to have you take this test so that you can become a math teacher. The fact that we did away with that is absolutely brilliant and it didn't cost a dime.

Thank you. And maybe just for our chair, too. Just a comment. One thing that wasn't mentioned, that one of our successes last year, we had a bill in this committee and funding the budget is the time to get it.

My niece just graduated from Oregon State graduate from high school in California had to go to Oregon because not enough spots at UC, another source subject for us, and she got her bachelor's degree and her teacher credential in four years and it's way too complicated.

So we did expand the integrated ITP. I think they call it integrated teacher prep programs and we should be doing more of that. It shouldn't be the one off. It should be the norm to be able to get your teacher credential in a four year degree. We should be able to shave off some other coursework that's there. Lastly, I did want to ask a question and recognize my constituent here and educator and education leader in the San Juan district. Thanks for being here and representing the voice of educators here locally.

You're welcome.

You mentioned a lot of elements that are in play to help improve the impact of teachers and frankly, more importantly, the outcomes of our students, whether they're teachers aides, mental health counselors, nurses.

And we're hiring more people for the class, for TK, the second teacher in the TK classrooms. They all relate to people and we're having this people shortage.

So do you have any observations or what we need to do to focus on those subset of individuals, mainly those people, they're not necessarily teachers. They're other different categories. They're educators. They're on the school site, but they're not necessarily credentialed teachers.

Great question. And I think that that question is similar to what we're speaking just about teachers, too, that there just aren't enough people in the pipeline. And when any one person is missing, it just has that ripple effect to everybody else.

And it was said earlier, too, that the single most important indicator of student success is a quality teacher. And so we need those folks in the classroom and we don't have enough of them.

We don't have the supply chain, but some of the members same is true for the others because if we don't have that instructional assistant or our student isn't getting the remediation and that support they need, as we look through an equity lens to provide for our students, it has the impact on everyone.

And so how to get them. Some of the ideas have been shared here today. We do have some recruitment programs that we're hoping to find success. I mean, we're working hard, but it is such a devastatingly systemic problem when even HR doesn't have the people power to go out and do the work of recruitment to their level.

Because when we've stepped back into study it, we're like, where do we start? And we're trying to get creative. And I wish I had an easy answer for you that, hey, here's what we can do to get these other folks in place.

But everyone is such at a loss of the how and we're trying to be inventive. And so many people are leaving our system, too, as we've heard before. So it's even hard when you don't have those veterans in all these different positions to lead the way. It's hard to help the others that come on new to then want to stay and retain them. So sorry, I don't have a definitive answer for you.

Well, I think that it's all for nothing if we don't find that answer, because we've spent billions the block grant on learning recovery looking for people after school programs. We had a hearing yesterday on behavioral health and what we're doing in classrooms.

So all those relate to people and so we can put all the money we want in our state budget. And unless we come up with ways to have attracted to people to sign up and say, yes, sign me up, what are we doing?

You're right. And that would be one thing with some of the monies and a good amount of them do have, we've got to use them by a certain date. And if that could be extended, that would help us retain people because that's what we're feeling. We're like, we've got this money.

We want to do this. We have the plans. We don't have the people. So we're not able to implement. And it's not for a lack of trying or commitment or being positive about it.

The people aren't out there. And so we're trying our hardest. And if we had more time, then we would be hopeful that we can continue to be creative and try to be innovative to find the folks.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Dahle.

Thank you all for being here today and for, at the very end, thank you so much for being here. So I have a question for Ms. Kenny. You mentioned the 12,000. So my question earlier to the first panel was, I love color charts. These are very helpful.

So I'm going to hold it up. So I could just ask maybe this will help. This number here, how many positions would we need to fill that we are no longer using an emergency credential?

So, I mean, what you see on that chart, and it's the red, which is the emergency style permits. Those go to people who haven't demonstrated subject matter competency and may not yet be enrolled in a teacher preparation program. Then in the light blue, those are intern credentials.

Those are people who have demonstrated subject matter competency, are enrolled in an internship program but haven't yet completed their preparation. So they're teaching and learning at the same time. And both of those are an indicator of shortages.

Because districts can only hire those folks if they can't fill the position with a fully credentialed teacher. So if you add up for the most recent year, it's about 12,000 positions that are being filled with folks who haven't yet completed their preparation. That's where that number comes from.

CDE also collects data from districts in October. That's their kind of estimated new hires for the next year. It's another source of data you can look to, but that also includes folks who are moving across districts as well.

But that's a total statewide.

Yes.

I just want to make sure I'm clear on that. And then also, Mr. Roth, you mentioned school nurses, which is something that I hear consistently across my very rural district in this color coded chart. Where do they land in this group?

Let me reference that just one moment and see if I can.

It just doesn't say specifically school nurses. So I'm just wondering what category they would be in.

It appears, and this is my first real look at it, but that they're not included here in this chart here because I think it would be a stretch if we were to say that they were included under counselors, social workers and psychologists.

That's specific to those position we have. Right. Those positions. I don't see that captured anywhere else, but I don't want to say that definitively because it's not my chart, not my data.

I'm very interested in knowing that if that's something that I could ask of you to get back because you mentioned carrying a load of 1.4 for school nurses. And so I don't know if any of you could speak to the barriers of hiring school nurses specifically.

I know that what I'm hearing from my superintendents are having that RN to be a school nurse, which we all know that everyone would love an RN for our hospitals and everywhere. So could you speak to those barriers at all?

So it's similar to other, everyone's competing for the same number of people. We're seeing it in private practice, too. We're seeing it in hospitals. Sacramento County Office of Education has partnered with districts in the area that were with some intern programs that hopefully will be promising. We're just starting to kick that off. So we're hoping that that will help, too.

Locally, we just negotiated very impressive contract deal at the beginning of this year that we're looking at our hardest to staff areas with our membership, with incentives when they come on board. So for nurses, there would be a stipend that they would receive because they're so hard to staff.

So we're trying to be inventive and creative to increase our, I mean, to be honest, say we're fortunate, say we are able to fill all our positions. We're taking them from a local district, someone else that lives in Sacramento. So I don't know how we make the change. Scoir's program with the internships I think will be promising. And maybe others have similar programs, too.

Thank you. And Ms. Armalino, thank you for joining us today. You're in my district and I have a lot of conversations with your Superintendent, your county Superintendent, Juda Flores. She does a really great job.

And I know that Shasta County has made some really impressive headway, and I know that we have shortages, but you guys do a really great job and I appreciate you very much. My schools were open in my district for the most part during COVID and I'm really proud of that. So could you speak to those school nurses? Do you have one for your campus right now currently?

Yeah, we actually have three. So we're looking to actually contract out to some smaller districts to help support them because most other districts are not that lucky. So I'm glad none of my colleagues are listening to this right now.

It is hard to compete with hospital pay, and so it often is parents who are looking for a little more flexibility in their schedules that mimic a school year. So we've been very fortunate.

I think that does speak to the mental health for students to be able to increase the number of professional healthcare providers on our campuses. And so we get excited about. My colleagues spoke to money putting in the budget for the mental health of our students.

We still need those positions filled to wrap around the services for our students. So thank you all so much for being here today, and I'm sure we'll have follow up questions later.

All right, thank you. I have a few questions. Perhaps I can start with Superintendent Armelino. You mentioned the panel is focused a lot on teacher shortages. I know that Ms. Dahle also talked about nurses and classified employees. I wanted to follow up on the classified employees.

I had heard that in many school districts, like a cafeteria worker can get paid more to work at a Mcdonald's than they would get paid to work at the school cafeteria. Are you facing similar challenges like that in terms of.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's certainly the increase in minimum wage has helped somewhat, but it's still difficult to attract with the limited hours that sometimes come classified work. It's not necessarily easy work, and they don't always have the benefits that other jobs have. So it is really difficult to compete with other jobs of similar pay range.

For the jobs with similar job duties, like, let's say a cafeteria worker versus a fast food worker. Are you providing on top of the salary, the pension and benefits?

Well, it depends on how many hours they work, and that's always quite a balance because once they're over not the HR person, but 5 hours or something and they're into PERS, then your cost goes up so much more.

So historically, we've always tried to keep our jobs under that number of hours, but now we're offering more of those positions, and then you're just trying to do the math to make sure that you don't reach that tipping point where you can't sustain that. But certainly that's what people should have, I think, to have a viable position.

So I just heard a proposal yesterday of giving classified employees the option to be able to work in multiple jobs.

We are doing some of that already, and it's helping us survive. I think that many of our people are tired, we do have bus drivers who will come and help serve lunch. So we're trying to get whatever we can out of people to serve kids. And usually because it is about children that helps motivate people to want to pitch in and do what they can.

So to give them that choice, is that something that from the administrator's perspective in terms of balancing your budget, it sounds like that does provide a fiscally viable option for you.

It does, because of job descriptions and all those things. They have to be willing to do that. And if they aren't, they aren't.

Okay, thank you. I'd like to turn to Dr. Johnson. I think last year I read in some article, at least at some point, that Superintendent Carvalho saying that they have the funding to hire more mental health counselors, but they've all been able to fill like a third of the positions for which they have the funding. Has that improved?

Yes, it's improved, but at the core of it, it's really at the core of everything we've been talking about today. It is a supply problem. It's a challenge to be able to get the folks who have the necessary certification and to want to work in that field.

I mean, this is kind of analogous to the school nurse argument, right? Because mental health professionals have options, many other options, in private practice or in other public sector practice. And again, it goes down to pay.

It goes down to working conditions. One of the advantages we have that Mr. Roth pointed out earlier was the. Or actually, I think it was, Superintendent Armelino pointed out that people want to have schedules that are conducive to their family lives. And I think that is definitely one thing that school districts have that's a leg up on other industries when recruiting these folks. But competition is absolutely fierce there.

I don't know if you heard my question, too. I think the previous panel about this model. Some schools are partnering with universities to offer placements for their social worker candidates to fulfill their required clinical hours in the schools. Is that something that LAUSD is doing? Has considered?

Absolutely. In fact, I think it's one of our most high leverage recruitment strategies is really to work with our universities to have not only the mental health professionals who are earning those pupil personnel services credentials, but also our teachers. I like to call it an extended audition.

It gives the principal an extended amount of time to be able to evaluate future teachers. And this is one of the things we're working at, being a lot more strategic with and with a district that is our size.

That can be a little bit challenging. But we're having individual conversations with principals about working with particular universities and working with their clinical placement coordinators to, first of all, identify teachers at the school sites or other.

If we're talking about counselors or if we're talking about people service in attendance or psychiatric social workers, identifying those individuals who meet the qualifications to serve as a mentor, as a guiding teacher, preceptor, what have you, so that we can very strategically place student teachers in these schools, especially the schools that have the greatest area of need.

So they're helping to fill the gap in terms of providing the mental health services.

It's more of a future gap. I mean, they're learning on the job.They're learning how to be a psychiatric social worker, school counselor, school psychologist, so on and so forth. And we do employ some interns in those capacities, but for the most part, they are the students and they are learning alongside the experienced mentor.

But then the advantage to us is being able to, and we get a lot of new hires out of those groups of student teachers and folks doing their clinical practice in our schools.

But what about the students? Is that helping the students meet their mental health needs?

Well, I'm sure it is, yes.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Last but not least to Mr. Roth, thank you for representing all the hardworking teachers. My last question, what is the single most important thing that the State of California can do to support teachers in the classroom with all the challenges that you're facing today?

Glad you saved. The easiest question for last. One of the things that I stated before, I think it would be beneficial if there is a way to extend some of the funding.

It's not for a lack of trying that any of the districts are trying to fill these positions. It's what we've heard all day. It's not for lack of commitment or care. And to see those dollars go away, to me, doesn't make sense. It's different.

When you have a grant, you write a grant, you have a plan. If you don't fulfill that, it's myself as a classroom teacher. I have an agreement with whoever the funder is, and do I fulfill that or not?

This is a little different. And we were overjoyed to see these funds a couple of years ago, last year. I mean, it's been great what we're looking at, and we're excited about the May Revise and all that, but when the people aren't there, that makes it so challenging. So, yeah, that would be the first thing that pops into my mind. But if I have others, I'll let you know.

Okay. Thank you. Sounds like a budget issue. Mr. Budget Chairman, seeing no further questions. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your experiences, your expertise. We really appreciate it. Okay, we are ready for public comments. For those that want to make a public comment, please limit your comment to one minute. And please come to the microphone up front if. Yes, ma'am, please.

Hi. Thank you, assemblymembers. My name is Nicolle Young. I'm the chapter chair of the Placer County Moms for Liberty group. And to say that you didn't have a playbook is true. There was no playbook. That was an understatement. But I have to say, the football was fumbled.

I'm a football mom, so I'm using that analogy. The football was fumbled in a spectacular fashion. An apology would be nice, but I'm not going to get my hopes up for that one.

Anyway, back to the issues at hand. I would like to see. We had a lot of panel of experts it would be nice to have some parents on so they could give the students perspective to how the pandemic policies affected them. It wasn't the pandemic that affected them.

Children were largely safe from it. It was the policies that were in place that negatively impacted our California students and the youth. And there is an entire generation that is missing out on crucial pockets of education.

And I can see from this hearing that it's going to be very difficult to regain that lost education. And once education is lost, once those gaps and those holes are there, especially for our younger kids, it's very difficult to regain that level of education.

And I also have a third grader. When one of the presenters was talking about their third grader or the third graders being hit the hardest, these policies went into effect. The schools closed when those third graders were in kindergarten.

Kindergarten is where you learn to socialize, where you learn to follow rules, where you learn your ABC's. For the amount of time that went into trying to keep my daughter engaged on Zoom while I was running back and forth between three other children, it was next to impossible.

So impossible. And I was fortunate. I pulled my children out of the public school system. So we're part of the missing students. She's fine. She's learning how to read. We found activities for her, but that led up.

Not everyone can do that. These problems. Also, there was the mental health and the suicide aspect. I have older children. We buried four of their friends from the policies enacted by this state. Four young people decided their lives were no longer worth living, and we said goodbye to them.

And that also rests on this state, on this committee, on the people responsible for actively working to keep our schools closed. And now we have a monumental task ahead of us.

So as a parent and a child education advocate, I would like to have a seat at the table when these policies are made so you can have input from somebody who lived this life, who lived through the policies, who was raising children through this horrible mishap where we pretended that Florida state schools weren't open. Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Dakota, Colorado, Utah. I could go on Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Germany. We pretended that those countries were not happening and we acted as if California was in a vacuum.

We didn't pull from other states and other countries of what was working for them and how we could implement this. So hopefully this never happens again. But in the future going forward, let's talk to some parents. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, members. My name is Kasha Williams and I'm the legislative director of California Parents Union. Our union represents thousands of members across California. As the state of emergency in California ends, schools are still recovering from a loss of enrollment and funding due to lower average daily attendance.

This is something that is consistently being brought up during the school board meetings I've been attending for the last few months especially. Our organization is part of a broad coalition called Convention on Health Rights.

We share concerns about recently proposed Assembly Bill 659, a bill that threatens to further lower enrollment across our school districts. Assembly Bill 659 would mandate the HPV vaccine for students entering the 8th grade in order to attend both public and private schools and would not allow for a religious or conscientious exemption. Approximately 30% of teens in California are not vaccinated for HPV.

With 23% of parents concerned about the HPV vaccine safety, it is unlikely that these concerned families will want to comply should the bill pass. Additionally, medical exemptions are only allowed for the very narrow contraindications defined by the CDC and do not include receiving an exemption for one vaccine based on a reaction to a different vaccine, nor based on a family medical history.

Ma'am, I'm going to ask you to try to wrap up.

All right, so my sincere question to you as an assembly education is to take this bill under your consideration for a hearing, as this bill would impact many of our students that are just going into the 8th grade I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Hello, Mr. Muratsuchi and committee. My name is Max Bonilla, and I just have to say that schools did not contribute much to our community spread. Our Governor happened to enroll his kids in private school, and so he obviously believed that sending his kids to school wasn't a threat.

The health risks for keeping schools open was much the health risk for keeping schools open was much lower than keeping them closed. The amount of myths perpetuated by our experts is just astonishing.

Even the New York Post acknowledges this. We had political elitists making the decisions on behalf of all school children. Being a student who was denied the right to education during my freshman and sophomore high school years, while the cases amongst the youth were really low, forced me to investigate the political motivations behind virtual learning. School dances and extracurricular activities encouraged kids to get out and exercise rather than remaining at home.

That right was denied to them as they were stuck at home completing busy work with hardly any lecturing, while pouring billions more into our education budget at the behest of the teachers unions. The data shows that children experience some of the worst learning outcomes.

We remain 50th in literacy, all the while spending $26,000 per student. Also, masks did not mitigate the spread. In fact, they exacerbated the spread of speech impediments.

All right, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap up.

Do you mind if I take about 20 more seconds, sir?

I've given you almost an additional minute, but go ahead.

Okay. Our solution to dealing with anxiety and depression is not medicating children or giving them antidepressants. It's about reeling them back into a sense of normalcy and promising them that these atrocities will never happen again. We do not want pandemic amnesty.

We want pandemic accountability. We have to ask, was it really the pandemic that kept schools shuttered? Or was it teachers who did not want to work? All that remains is being transparent about what occurred, holding our medical professionals accountable, and propelling our students towards wonderful careers. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, chair and members. My name is Adriel Coro. I am the senior council of Public Policy and Advocacy for the United Way Capital Region. And so we serve five counties within the Sacramento Capital Region.

And I want to thank you all for the presentations that were here today. We had many important people here in the room to tackle this very important issue of learning loss during the pandemic and at United Way what we've been doing for over 100 years is capitalize on our partnerships.

And what we're going to need is a comprehensive partnership approach to be able to address this huge need for our children of color and children who are growing in low resource communities.

With our STARS program, which is an evidence based program, in 2122 we saw that students who were enrolled in that program had an increase in reading levels of over 1.5.

And so that program, as well as some of the other programs that we are running, including we're in the Washington Unified School District, where we are a part of the rollout of community schools. And so we just want to let you all know that we're here and we're here to support, and it's going to take a comprehensive approach.

And so looking at your CBOs, looking at ways that we can continue to bring resources into the school to address this huge divide. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Patricia, and I'm an educator and a speech language pathology assistant. And I've witnessed firsthand the negative effects, the pandemic and the unnecessary mask mandate that was forced on our children has caused.

Last week, the New York Times stated the most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of COVID outlined that all the mandates did nothing. In fact, they did less than nothing.

They hurt the kids by causing depression, anxiety, lack of social skills, and the inability to regulate emotions by fostering an irrational fear in all of them. There have been studies which have shown an increase in language delays and children being left behind academically from the nonage appropriate expectations that all children can learn over Zoom.

As an advocate for children, please take responsibility for the damage your mandates have caused and please support parental rights in all aspects of children's lives.

It's critical to encourage parental involvement in a child's education because ultimately they know what's best for their child. The family unit is the most important aspect of their lives. And lastly, let's encourage our children to love themselves and to love their peers and to set them and their families up for success so we can move forward in a positive light. Thank you and God bless.

Thank you. Thank you. I believe that is the end of public comments. This hearing is adjourned. Thank you.